My Cultural Year

A Moving Tribute from the Poet Laureate

2012-01-09T09:17:00.000Z

'Stephen Lawrence' by Carol Ann Duffy

Cold pavement indeed
the night you died,
murdered;
but the airborne drop of blood
from your wound
was a seed
your mother sewed
into hard ground –
your life's length doubled,
unlived, stilled,
till one flower, thorned,
bloomed
in her hand,
love's just blade.

Written by the poet laureate after the conviction of two men for the teenager's murder in 1993

New Year, New Start!

2012-01-07T15:38:00.006Z

Having finally accepted that being a political activist of any sort is a rather futile past-time,(it's only taken me forty five years!) I thought I'd record what happens for me culturally during 2012. This will be for my own benefit although if anyone happens on this blog and sees a post that they find interesting, they are welcome to post a comment.

January 2012 finds me halfway through a couple of Open University modules: A177 Introduction to Shakespeare and A150 Voices and Texts. In the Shakespeare I've completed one assignment on The Taming of the Shrew and am about to start a longer one on Romeo and Juliet. In Voices and Texts I've been struggling with doing 'group work' on-line. Not an easy task and one which I have found immensely frustrating. The subject matter - John Donne's Holy Sonnet VII and Book 22 of Homer's The Iliad have been terrific, trying to create a 'wiki-page' to which seven people contribute over the Christmas period has been a trial.

I managed to ready 50+ books of various sorts last year and hope to up this to 60 this year. Currently, I'm well into Charles Dickens: A Life by Claire Tomalin as my non-fiction work and The Last Hundred Days by Patrick McGuiness as bedtime reading, and I'm thoroughly enjoying both.

My long-term project for the years is a poem a week in accordance with the recommendations of Ruth Padel in her terrific little book 52 Ways of Looking at a Poem. Week 1 is Jo Shapcott's Mrs Noah: Taken After The Flood and Ruth Padel gives a feminist interpretation which had simply not occurred to me stemming from a particular meaning of the word 'taken' in the title. Apparently. the poem has more to do with sex than with animals. Clearly, I have a lot to learn about modern and post-modern poetry.

A couple of days ago, as a member of the Poetry Society, I nominated a collection of poems for the Ted Hughes Award, presumptuous of me I know, but this collection entitled Catulla et al by Tiffany Atkinson has had me laughing ever since I bought it a couple of months ago. A wonderfully exuberant and quirky collection guaranteed to brighten anyone's day.

2012 looks like being a bumper year in culture with the Cultural Olympiad, the World Shakespeare Festival, the Charles Dickens bi-centenary and the centenary of the birth of Lawrence Durrell, not forgetting Hay25 - so much to look forward to.

What Will Be Next To Go Down The A470?

2011-03-16T12:18:00.001Z

Yesterday, Powys County Council’s Board decided to close Theatr Powys and make it’s eight staff redundant. I do not blame Powys County Council, faced with the earlier withdrawal of funding for Theatr Powys by the Arts Council for Wales, the members of the Board had no real choice. It was clear that the county council could not bear the entire cost of funding Theatr Powys. Nor do we have any commercial businesses willing to step in and cough up any sort of contribution for the arts.

This is yet another example of the Welsh Assembly Government deciding, through their ‘arms-length’ agents, that projects in Powys and in Mid Wales in general can be sacrificed as long as the projects in South Wales and the Valleys are preserved. The closure of Theatr Powys follows on from the Aberystwyth Film Festival being ‘acquired’ by Cardiff and it won’t be long before ‘Brecon’ Jazz and the ‘Hay’ Festival of Literature will both find themselves re-located to the M4 corridor. Both these events have been fighting off the Cardiff grasp for years.

When are the movers and shakers of Mid Wales going to get their act together and resist the destruction of all that’s good and worthwhile in rural Wales?

World Book Night

2011-03-11T08:03:00.002Z

I was in Cardiff on Saturday last for a gathering of those interested campaigning to secure the REFORM of our voting system. I say REFORM because apparently certain Conservative fundamentalists have persuaded the BBC that the proposed change to our voting system is not a REFORM but merely an amendment. Anyway, while I lounging outside the Senedd I was given a copy of The Reluctant Fundamentalist by Mohsin Hamid, one of apparently 1 million books that were given away that week-end by some 20,000 specially selected donors.

I have now read and thoroughly enjoyed this book and wish to pass it on to someone else who has the stomach for it, so the first person to contact me with their postal address will get a copy of The Reluctant Fundamentalist on condition that they agree to pass it on to some other deserving person when they have read it.

Warning: Reading this book will change your life, well your world view, at least.

At Last! At Last!

2011-03-06T08:28:00.001Z

Just as I was beginning to totally despair of the current Welsh political scene, with the smug complacency of Labour and Plaid in their ‘One Wales’ coalition and the noisy irrelevance of the self-styled ‘Welsh’ Conservatives, Kirsty Williams has proved that someone down at Cardiff Bay has listened to the Welsh people, has taken on board the smouldering discontent that permeates throughout Wales outside Cardiff, and is prepared to offer sensible, workable solutions for getting the devolution project back on track. She, at least, has realised that there is a yawning gap between the talking shop at the Senedd and the pubs, clubs and village halls of the real Wales, and well done to her for doing so.

Boys Will Be Boys

2011-03-02T11:41:00.000Z

Reading a number of recent reports and perusing recently published statistics dealing with educational performance in Wales, the well-established trend of boys underperforming vis-a-vis girls in most subjects, but particularly in the humanities, is getting progressively worse. This is a serious issue and needs to be addressed as a matter of urgency.

At the risk of being labelled politically incorrect, I would argue that the problem is deep-rooted and extensive and is, in some measure, a consequence of profound changes in our society. There seems to be a current fashion for single parenthood which, when combined with ‘education’ coming to be regarded as a ‘female’ profession, especially at primary level, can result in male children rarely having any contact with male role models in their formative years. As a result they have little awareness of the benefits of a sound education and how a lack of a good education affects their economic prospects. Moreover, these boys tend to become disaffected from school relatively early and under these circumstances it is hardly surprising that they under perform.

Alongside this, households seem to be more likely to have widescreen televisions and computer games machines than books and in such households there is apparently little encouragement for children to read of their own volition.

What could government do to address this problem, assuming that they are aware of it? Well, one thing they could do is to positively discriminate a little in favour of getting more males into the teaching profession, particularly in the primary sector. Secondly, in the secondary sector, they could arrange for children to be taught in single-sex classes for the core subjects of English, Mathematics and Science. Thirdly, they could instigate a serious and integrated campaign throughout the education system to make poor literacy and numeracy as socially unacceptable as smoking. Such a campaign would be an ideal theme for Cameron’s ‘Big Society’ and have a much more profound effect that all the much-vaunted foreign aid that he proposes to target in other countries to prevent the radicalisation of potential religious extremists.

Idle Speculation

2011-02-28T07:24:00.000Z

A friend and I were discussing the coming referendum on additional powers for the National Assembly and idly speculating what we, as residents of Powys, might do in order to raise our profile in Cardiff Bay. This would be particularly relevant after the demise of the ‘One Wales’ Government in May.

His idea was to set up border posts on all access points to Powys, charge a toll of all inward journeys and use that money to make up for the much-publicized failure of One Wales’ economic policies.

My idea was simpler, if we want to stem the flow of resources from the rest of Wales into Cardiff, all we need to do is to petition 10 Downing Street for Powys to be allowed to secede from Wales and to re-join England. Powys couldn’t be worse off by being part of England and, with a fair wind, might even be better off with regard to certain devolved areas like education and health.

All idle speculation, of course, but something has to be done about reversing the trend for the rest of Wales being transformed into the new state of Greater Cardiff.

Say No To Further Increases In Council Tax

2011-02-07T11:19:00.001Z

The political groups on Powys County Council may have already decided to increase council tax for the seventh successive year. It’s time to take a stand and simply say to our County Councillors: “ENOUGH IS ENOUGH”.

By agreeing to carry out the Welsh Assembly Government’s orders and raise Council Tax in Powys our Councillors are aiding and abetting in the transfer of scarce resources from Powys to South and West Wales for the further aggrandisement of their headquarters in Cardiff Bay. WAG are doing this by forcing council taxpayers in Powys to make up the ever-increasing shortfall in the funding that Powys County Council receives from WAG.

Remember, it is not profligate spending by the county council that has caused the funding shortfall, rather it is profligate spending by the euphemistically misnamed “One Wales” government who would rather waste taxpayers money on a huge subsidy to private operators who run the North-South Air Link, on private contractors who wilfully overspend on road projects in Wales which the Assembly Government has failed to control and bailing out the Millennium Arts Centre located, guess where? Yes, Cardiff Bay.

This is the same “One Wales” Government that now wants us, the hard-pressed Powys taxpayers, to give them more powers to continue their profligacy. It is time to say “No” to any further rises in council tax, it is a tax than only ever increases, and it is a grossly unfair tax. Remember the council tax base in Wales, the notional value of our properties, was re-valued upwards in 2006, so that most of us faced a huge increase in our council tax bills then. This hasn’t happened in England, there council tax payers are still paying their council tax based on 1991 valuations. But then they don’t have to pay for an additional tier of government.

Currently, we in Wales contribute towards four tiers of government: the UK government at Westminster; the regional government at Cardiff Bay; our county councils and our town or community councils. We have become grossly over-governed and it is time to change the governance in Wales. At least one tier of government needs to be removed and quickly, before the tax burden in paying for this becomes unsupportable.

Write to your representatives and demand no further increases to council tax until at least one tier of government is removed.

The Road To Damascus

2011-02-02T10:25:00.002Z

Oh what joy! This morning I received an e-mail from one of our local county councillors and currently Mayor of Llandrindod, Gary Price. In it he asks for help to run a street stall in Llandrindod promoting the ‘Yes for Wales’ campaign.

It is both interesting and revealing to note that this is the same Gary Price who, at a public meeting of Sir Emyr Jones Parry’s All Wales Convention held at the Monty Club in Newtown just two years ago, very publicly stated that if he had his way, he would abolish the Welsh Assembly. Over the last couple of years, Councillor Price has either undergone a political conversion to nationalism of Dasmascene proportions, or he has become a simple yet cynical political opportunist. Now, he not only wants to represent Plaid Cymru in the Assembly having been adopted as their candidate for the election in May, but he also wants the rest of us to vote for extra powers for that Assembly.

As I think Lincoln once said: “You can fool some of the people all of the time, and you can fool all the people some of the time, but you can’t fool all the people all of the time.” Think hard on this Councillor Price.

A New Take On Direct Political Action

2011-01-13T08:04:00.002Z

I have a new excuse for people who ask me why I choose to wear a beard, apart from the obvious - laziness. I doing it for Belgium!

Symptom of a Sick Society

2011-01-12T09:20:00.004Z

Words cannot express how totally sick the activities of these so-called 'Christians' make me feel. There is something very, very wrong with America if this sort of behaviour is tolerated and defended by religious leaders.

Additional Powers - Cui Bono?

2011-01-06T21:27:00.001Z

I have long supported the idea of devolution within a federal United Kingdom, so I should have a natural propensity to vote ‘yes’ in the forthcoming referendum on more powers for the Welsh Assembly. However, it is no longer that simple. If I am to be persuaded to vote ‘yes’ I will need to be convinced on three issues.

Firstly, I need to be convinced that more powers for the Assembly is not merely a milestone on the way to full independence for Wales. Devolution is not the same as independence and it is devolution that I want and not independence. Living in rural Mid Wales, I don’t want to move from domination by a distant Westminster to domination by a slightly less distant Cardiff Bay. I want to be governed by an administration that understands the problems of my locality and is keen to improve my lot. I have been appalled by the priorities of the One Wales government who are doing their utmost to ruin local healthcare by severing the long established links between Powys residents and English hospitals in general, and Hereford Hospital in particular.

Secondly, I need to be convinced that there is a transparent and effective method of scrutinizing legislation created by the Welsh Assembly with their additional powers. Westminster has a second chamber which houses probably the best scrutineers of proposed legislation in the world. What will the Welsh Assembly be able to offer in terms of scrutiny?

Finally, I need to be convinced that the Welsh Assembly with its additional powers will act to the benefit of ALL people living within the borders of Wales and not just for the benefit of those living in the so-called’ heartlands’. To date the residents of East Wales, those areas adjacent to the English border, have had a rough deal from Cardiff Bay. Little regeneration, no recognition of the particular problems caused by rurality and little support for its tourism and agriculture industries. Worst of all there has been no support to help us sustain our vulnerable communities, only more school closures, more post office closures and no support at all for our village pubs and shops.

So if the ‘yes’ campaign are to secure my vote in March, they have got a lot of work to do. There is far more scepticism among the people now than in 1997, then there was hope for a better Wales. Now there is the realisation that devolution has benefited only favoured parts of Wales, the rest has been ignored. This cannot be allowed to continue.

The Crime of Eccentricity

2011-01-04T08:09:00.001Z

Why can’t society deal with difference? What is wrong with us? We used to be proud of our eccentrics and now we pillory them. We have become an intolerant, insular and xenophobic society, and we are getting worse. The case of Chris Jeffries is but the latest example of how a rampant press can latch on to a suspect, try him and find him guilty by innuendo long before his interview by the police has been concluded. Is it too much to ask the press to act responsibly? We are fortunate in Britain to have a free press, so many other countries would long for similar freedom. But with this freedom comes a duty to report news impartially and responsibly. Is this really too much to ask?

A New Year's Message from the Grass Roots

2011-01-01T08:10:00.001Z

114 Labour Members of Parliament have already stated that they are going to campaign for a ‘No’ vote in the AV referendum in May. These so-called ‘Progressives’ seek to deny the British people a fairer system of voting in parliamentary elections. Their stance is anti-democratic and they need to be challenged on this.

Of these 114, nine represent Welsh constituencies:

Alyn and Deeside: MARK TAMI
Blaenau Gwent: NICK SMITH
Cardiff South and Penarth: ALUN MICHAEL
Cynon Valley: ANN CLWYD
Islwyn: CHRIS EVANS
Swansea West: GERAINT DAVIES
Torfaen: PAUL MURPHY
Wrexham: IAN LUCAS
Ynys Mon: ALBERT OWEN

If you are an elector in any of these nine constituencies and you support a fairer voting system, please lobby your MP to ensure that they are made aware of your views and that their opposition to the Alternative Voting system is not acceptable.

A Reading Year

2010-12-31T16:16:00.004Z

As the year changes, many are inclined to look backwards on the previous year and to assess whether or not it has been a ‘good year’. However, for me this last year was the one during which I reached one of life’s recognised milestones – achieving the age of sixty-five, and a deeper reflection seems to be called for.

I have always been a reader and for most of my life I have been an unconscious reader in the sense that the act of reading was far more important than what precisely, I chose to read. Of course, I had been instilled with an aversion to read ‘rubbish’ – my father, as an English teacher, had a very clear idea of what was and wasn’t ‘rubbish’, I however, am slightly less rigid in this view. I have long felt that one must at least sample the rubbish, in order to decide whether it is indeed, worthy of such contempt. I have also been fairly disciplined in my reading, to the extent that once having started reading a book, I do feel an obligation to see it through to the end. I give up on very few books, the graphic novel ‘Watchmen’ is a recent one that proved too much, some I put down temporarily, having been distracted by the prospect of some more instant gratification, only to pick that same book up later and finish it. This year, I finished Hardy’s ‘Far from the Madding Crowd’ some forty years or so after having first picked it up.

Over recent years I have settled into the habit of having two books on the go at the same time, usually a work of fiction and a work of non-fiction. In addition I will have one or two books at hand in order to dip into as my mood dictates; poetry or drama, for example, and even a book written in a foreign language. So out of 46 books read completely within the last calendar year, here are seven that I would recommend:

Autobiography: A Journey by Tony Blair
Biography: Anthony Blunt: His Lives by Miranda Carter
Literary Novel: With Fire and Sword by Henryk Sienkiewicz
Modern Novel: What a Carve Up! By Jonathan Coe
Essay Collection: A Plea for Eros by Siri Hustvedt
Poetry: Frequencies by R S Thomas
History: The Last Mughal: The Fall of a Dynasty, Dehli 1857 by William Dalrymple

I recommend Blair’s autobiography because of both its innovative style and the insight it gives into a very large ego. The biography of Anthony Blunt is well researched and beautifully written. Sienkiewicz’s With Fire and Sword is a rip-roaring historical adventure and deserves a new and more modern translation and a place among the wonderful range of Penguin Classics. What a Carve Up! is a superb satire and extremely funny. Siri Hustvedt is one of the very few American essayists that I consider worth reading. Nobody else writing in English evokes Wales and the Welsh better than R S Thomas. William Dalrymple, as ever, gives us a wonderfully balanced account of a very brutal period of British history.

2010 was a wonderful reading year for me and although I fell short of my target of reading 50 books in the year, I read very little rubbish. Happy New Year and enjoyable reading to all who happen on this blog.

The Vultures Are Circling Over The Coalition

2010-12-21T16:37:00.000Z

With this afternoon’s statement from the Daily Telegraph revealing further comments made by Vince Cable in their ‘sting’ operation using undercover reporters posing as Lib Dem activists, it is becoming much clearer what is going on. This is an attempt by the Tory right wing, aided and abetted by Tory sympathisers among the press, to seriously de-stabilise the coalition government and force a general election early next year. They hope to catch Labour still in their state of policy confusion and the Lib Dems still being seen entirely responsible for the raising of tuition fees thus giving the Tories a realistic chance of winning this early election. As a party political strategy it is sound, as a broader method of doing politics, it is disastrous. It represents a return to bi-partisan confrontation and puts British politics back thirty years. Worse of all it undermines all notions of trust and decency in British politics. Strange that John Denham hasn’t realised what is going on, I thought he was cleverer than that.

Dubious Journalism

2010-12-21T11:00:00.000Z

I must say that I’m rather relieved that Vince Cable is supposedly finding the coalition difficult. It was beginning to look a little too cosy, bearing in mind it’s the Tories who are the coalition partners. What is sordid is the way these revelations were obtained. It doesn’t say much for either Vince or the Daily Telegraph.

I would have expected Vince Cable to be able to recognise genuine Lib Dem activists by now, even the non-hirsute ones in proper shoes, and if he didn’t know these people wasn’t he rather unguarded in what he said? As for the Daily Telegraph sinking to the levels of the News of the World to gain information, well that’s hardly surprising I suppose, same old Tories. No wonder it’s known in some circles as the Daily Torygraph.

This episode may well have gone some way to reassuring some worried Lib Dem activists but the right-wing press has tasted blood now and will be thirsty for more. The coalition is under attack from the ‘raving Right’ as well as the ‘loony Left’, and it is the raving Right that is the more dangerous.

An Exquisite Torture

2010-12-17T08:15:00.000Z

I frequently despair of our local journalists. I had a telephone call from one of them this week asking me if I was an ‘atheist’. Apparently he was looking for a bona fide atheist to comment on the Bishop of Swansea and Brecon’s Christmas message. Apparently Bishop John, for whom I have a lot of respect, had expressed some impatience at press reports of militant atheists attacking the biblical stories on which the Christian faith is based, especially at this time of year.

I was rather taken aback. It is rather disconcerting to be telephoned out of the blue and asked if you are an atheist. I thought it a far too personal a question and refused to offer any comment at all. I do firmly believe in the separation of Church from State and I believe that church schools should not receive state support, but that’s a long way from being an atheist, and I began to suspect that the journalist didn’t really understand the immense complexity of personal belief.

However, it set me thinking about the whole messy business of classifying people and then labelling them based on their beliefs. It’s part of this modern obsession with categorisation, much of which is done on very flimsy evidence. What a person believes in is the product of a variety of influences: family, upbringing, social conditioning, peer pressure, and I suspect rather more rarely, deep thinking and balanced consideration. I reflect on my personal experience of religion, Presbyterian Sunday School, Anglican choir, long period of being anti all forms of religion, confirmed as an Anglican as an adult followed by a gradual and inevitable scepticism reinforced by absolute contempt for the preaching and activities of religious fundamentalists of all persuasions.

If I am unable to resist being labelled then I want to choose my own label rather than have ignorant journalists jumping to stupid and ill-considered conclusions. I guess I am an agnostic, one who adheres to the view that nothing is or can be known of the existence of God. It is a difficult but honourable position. It’s like being perched on a knife-edge, unwilling either to make a leap towards the obvious safety net of blind faith or to rely absolutely on reason and reject any possibility of the divine. Either of these alternatives can seem very attractive; both offer certainty, community and comfort. But it is their very certainty that feeds the scepticism of the agnostic. How do they know that God exists or doesn’t exist? What evidence do they have? How reliable is this evidence? The questions are endless, but being a questioner ensures that one approaches the subject with an open mind, open to the possibility that God exists and open to the possibility that He/She doesn’t. Being an agnostic is an exquisite torture, but by way of compensation, it offers endless amusement at the activities and pronouncements of both militant Christianity and militant atheism.

Thinking the Unthinkable

2010-12-16T21:38:00.002Z

With the continuing furore over university tuition fees, and the beggar-my-neighbour suggestions emanating from the Welsh Assembly and Scottish Governments, it is clear that the structure of British higher education needs a radical re-think. It is overly reliant on the support of the state and the state either doesn’t have enough money to adequately fund the sector, or is deliberately choosing to finance other things in preference to higher education. The quality of our best universities continues to rise, but they are struggling to attract adequate funding for undergraduate courses and in any case prefer to fund post-graduate studies and boost their international research ratings. So what’s to be done? Clearly, the impetus for ever higher fees to be charged to students is coming from the Russell Group of our 20 ‘top’ universities, they are the ones most concerned about their international reputation. So here is a suggestion.

Let the Russell Group of universities move into the private sector and charge what they feel the market will bear and compete with the best in the world. However, to ensure equality of opportunity, these private universities must ensure that the brightest and the best are able to attend regardless of their financial circumstances. So the state should insist that the Russell Group universities set up full scholarships to cover both tuition and living expenses for say 30 - 40% of their undergraduate places. These scholarships to be awarded to those potential students with the greatest financial need and biased towards applicants from the state school sector.

For the remaining universities, undergraduate students should have their tuition fees paid by the state and should also be entitled to a maintenance grant of about half their living costs with the balance coming from student loans. In addition, these universities should be encouraged to offer significantly more vocational subjects and more part-time and distance learning routes to a first degree with the emphasis on flexibility and choice of modules and allow such students the opportunity to take a break in their studies if so desired. Part-time students in employment would pay the full fee with their employers being expected to bear a minimum of half the cost of tuition for part-time students in employment. Graduates from state universities should be able to reduce the size of their debt on graduation by contracting to serve as teachers in developing countries for one or two years immediately after graduation and before embarking on their careers or post-graduate study. This would be financed from the overseas aid budget.

Yes, I know I’m suggesting a two tier university system, but this only formalises what is actually happening at the moment, and if we can have the private and public sectors working side by side in primary and secondary education, and in the health service, why not in university education? Above all the emphasis of higher education needs to be redirected towards increasing the quality of those who graduate rather than the number of students as measured by the percentage of school leavers accessing it. It does not make sense for the universities to be continually turning out more and more graduates when the economy is unable to provide them with employment opportunities commensurate with their levels of skills and knowledge.

There Might Be Such A Thing As A 'Free Lunch'

2010-11-19T16:36:00.004Z

I read in this weeks County Times that Channel Four’s Dispatches programme has had the temerity to ask John Bufton MEP about the curious European Parliamentary practice, common on Fridays apparently, of signing the register, claiming the daily expenses and then going home. His defence of having “meetings to attend” or more expansively “I’ve got some work to do and meetings to attend” does, on the face of it, seem a little less than robust. No details of either the work done or the meetings attended are given, nor the names of the people being met, but to be fair to our illustrious MEP, perhaps he wasn’t asked the right questions. However, in the light of the recent difficulties over expenses experienced by Westminster MPs, one would have thought that Mr Bufton would have provided the interviewer with sufficient information to ensure that he was absolutely in the clear. Still, all this should be easy enough to check and as a result we might find out what the meetings were about. They must have been important to have been scheduled on a Friday.

What worries me is that we may still be electing representatives who think they have a right to claim expenses simply because they are provided for in the rules of the institution, rather than taking a minute or two to decide whether they have a moral right to those particular expenses on that particular day. It puts me in mind of County Councillors who used to claim back the cost of eating lunch at the Council’s subsidised canteen forgetting that had they been having lunch anywhere else on that day, they would have incurred some cost to themselves. Presumably that practice has stopped in the last couple of years.

Reflections on the Youth Justice System

2010-11-18T14:54:00.002Z

As a bit player in the criminal justice system, I sit on referral order panels for young offenders, I often find myself reflecting on the sentences handed down by magistrates and I wonder what they hope to achieve when they issue referral orders. And I do this in the context of a sociology essay I wrote nearly forty years ago as an undergraduate.

I don’t have the essay to hand but it was on the purposes of punishment and dealt with notions of retribution, reparation and rehabilitation. In my experience as a panel member, the victim, especially in cases of crimes of violence, is seeking retribution. They’ve been hurt and they want to hurt back. In rather primitive terms, they are looking for revenge on a sort of eye for an eye basis.

The community on the other hand, and as panel members my colleagues and I may loosely be said to represent the community, is looking for some sort of reparation. The victim sometimes is also looking for reparation, either directly or indirectly. Reparation in the sense of making good, the offender being required to ‘make good’ the damage he or she has caused to the victim directly or to the community in a wider sense.

Those professionals working within the criminal justice system are focused on rehabilitation, they take a longer view and are trying to ensure the young offender understands and learns from the damage, hurt, or whatever, he or she has caused and is predisposed never to repeat the offence or in any other way come into contact with the criminal justice system again.

So retribution, reparation and rehabilitation, all understandable if not all laudable aims of sentencing, but are they all achievable to an equal degree? The answer to this question has to be – rarely. So it really comes down to a question of balance, to try to devise an order that firstly, allows the victim to feel that they have obtained a sense of justice; secondly, to persuade the offender that he/she must do something constructive for the victim or community that enhances their understanding of the consequences of their misdemeanours; and thirdly, to ensure that help and support is provided so that there is no question of re-offending. It’s a very difficult balancing act, but one I feel would be made easier if more people properly understood the workings of the criminal justice system and were more willing to engage with it and actively support it in whatever way they feel is appropriate to them.

Perhaps this is really a message to Ken Clarke, the Justice Minister. If your ‘Big Society’ is to mean anything, you have to find innovative ways for many more people to become actively involved in the workings of criminal justice system and by doing so they will support that system because they understand it rather than criticise it because they don’t.

Blair's Foreign Policy - Did You Know?

2010-11-16T12:40:00.002Z

I’ve recently finished reading Tony Blair’s memoir ‘A Journey’. It is an interesting and ultimately worthwhile read, and it confirms much of what I knew or suspected before. My reason for reading it was to see if it threw some new light on why he took the decision that will forever define his premiership, why he took Britain into an illegal invasion of Iraq.

In his rather egocentric account, Blair would have us believe that his frustrations with the European response to Kosovo and his subsequent feelings of indebtedness to Bill Clinton for American support in that NATO action laid the ground for the invasion of Iraq on the coat-tails of the USA. After 9/11 we all should have seen what was coming, especially if we had taken notice of what Blair had said to the Economics Club of Chicago in April 1999. And this is the point, until the publication of this memoir a month or so ago, I hadn’t even known about this speech, Blair’s ‘Doctrine of the International Community’. The thrust of it is this: ‘… intervention to bring down a despotic dictatorial regime could be justified on grounds of the nature of that regime, not merely its immediate threat to our interests’. Does this mean that, in spite of his many denials, the dodgy dossier and all the evidence to Hutton and Chilcott, the invasion of Iraq was all about regime change, after all?

This doctrine is breathtaking in its arrogance and, in the light of subsequent events, it is more than a little disingenuous, take these five major considerations when considering intervention:

“First, are we sure of our case? War is an imperfect instrument for righting humanitarian distress; but armed force is sometimes the only means of dealing with dictators. Second, have we exhausted all diplomatic options? We should always give peace every chance, as we have in the case of Kosovo. Third, on the basis of a practical assessment of the situation, are there military operations we can sensibly and prudently undertake? Fourth, are we prepared for the long term? In the past we have talked too much of exit strategies. But having made a commitment we cannot simply walk away once the fight is over; better to stay with moderate numbers of troops than return for repeat performances with large numbers. And finally do we have national interests involved?”

Did the Labour Party debate this extraordinary deviation from the rather narrow view of national interest? Was there ever a wider public debate? Was this why Blair chose to outline this new thinking in America rather than at a Labour Party Conference? What really is chilling for me is that we, the British people, let him do this with so little debate, with so little opposition until it was too late. We let Blair and his tiny inner circle play cops and robbers on the international stage because of his sense of obligation to both Bill Clinton and George Bush, and once Blair had signed up the whole show was run by the extreme hardliners, Cheney and Rumsfeld.

Surely British foreign policy is too important to be left to a ‘maverick’ politician and his sycophantic acolytes to make up as they go along?

It's All In The Detail

2010-11-13T10:58:00.001Z

Yes, I know I must seemed obsessed by Councillor Gary Price, but he seems so contrary and devious that I find him a fascinating character study and one I am intending to use in a piece of fiction at sometime in the future.

If our local weekly newspapers are to be believed, and that, in itself, is a issue of some considerable doubt, Councillor Price claims to have been a member of Plaid for some eighteen months or so. This implies that he was a member of Plaid before he attached himself like some demented limpet to the group on Powys County Council formerly known as the Montgomeryshire Independents. In fact, Gary’s decision to join them caused the group to change its name to the Shire Independents just so they could accommodate the Radnorshire maverick. He so impressed them that he quickly got himself elected as Vice-Chairman of this independent, ‘Glyn Davies admiration society’ and then displaced a long-serving and well respected councillor for Blaen Hafren, Gwilym Evans, on the Council’s Board.

What’s so strange about all this is that a member of the Shire Independents now claims that membership of any political party automatically precludes a councillor from being a member of this ‘independent’ group of councillors. The obvious implication being that Gary Price must have mislead the group’s members as to his political allegiance when he persuaded them to accept him in to the group.

Another thing to note is that the Mid Wales Journal claims that Gary was born and educated in Llandrindod, yet I distinctly remember him telling me a few years ago that he was born in Beulah or was it Carmarthenshire? I know this is a trivial matter of detail, but it does raise issues regarding the extent to which he is to be believed.

Is This Really 'News'

2010-11-10T20:20:00.003Z

After four and a half months of silence, I couldn't resist posting on this earth-shattering news item concerning the most important man in Mid Wales, Councillor Gary Price. After years of toying with the Tories, and a year or so with the Montgomeryshire Independent councillors on Powys County Council and their giving him a seat on the Council's Board, Councillor Price, that fiercely Independent councillor, he who consistently boasted that 'independence' of political parties was the most important attribute of any councillor, he who was elected Mayor of Llandrindod a year after storming out of the council chamber in high umbrage and forcing an expensive by-election, has finally pitched in with that bunch of no-hopers, the Party of Wales. I hope Plaid realise what a valuable asset they have acquired.

Well done, Gary! I look forward to your nomination as Plaid's candidate for Brecon & Radnorshire at the forthcoming elections to the Welsh Assembly. If you secure the nomination, Plaid will at last have found a candidate worthy of their xenophobia. What really amazes me is that the BBC should consider this 'defection' even remotely newsworthy. It must be the silly season again down in Llandaff.

Progressive Alliance? What Progressive Alliance?

2010-06-30T08:56:00.004+01:00

There is a thought-provoking article in today’s Guardian from Tony Wright. In it he gets to the root of the issue as to why a re-alignment of the centre left hasn’t happened, didn’t happen after the election in May, and is not likely to happen anytime soon.

It is the challenge about how politicians on the centre-left view the State and its future. Wright points to a real argument is opening up about the size, shape and role of the state.

“Part of the argument is to make the distinction between those who see deficit reduction as a political opportunity and those who accept it as an economic necessity… If people come to feel that the cuts are not the product of grim necessity but of an ideological enthusiasm for reducing the state then that common sense will change. What will not, however, is the debate that has started about the state, and Labour needs to be part of it. Simply defending the state will not be enough – nor will attacking cuts without describing the alternative.urope have nothing distinctive to offer.”

Wright cites Tony Judt’s chiding that “Social Democrats in today’s Europe have nothing distinctive to offer”, and claims that among the parties of the left: “There is a profound disorientation of ideas. The neoliberal ascendancy of the last 30 years has crashed to the ground, but the materials for its replacement have not yet even begun to be assembled. In every sense it is a time for fundamentals, on the economy, society and political system, in the circumstances in which we now find ourselves. It is time for some genuinely big ideas, capable of finding public resonance.”

He hopes, probably in vain, that the forthcoming Labour leadership contest will give some impetus to this important debate and crucially he contends that then “…we might start to build a progressive alliance that is worthy of the name.”

It's Only A Game!

2010-06-28T07:22:00.002+01:00

Yes, in spite of what the late Bill Shankly said, a game of football is simply that, a game. I have always understood that a game of football is a game between two sides of nominally eleven players at any one time and the better team on the day wins. Now forgive me if I have missed something yesterday, but isn’t that what happened?

There were, of course, other sporting events taking place over the last couple of days. One Andy Murray won a gripping tennis match against Gilles Simon, Jorge Lorenzo won an excellent Dutch MotoGP at Assen, Sebastian Vettel led two British drivers home at the European Formula 1 Grand Prix at Valencia, even an “England” team won a cricket match against Australia and thereby clinched a series win against an old enemy.

The superb and exciting sporting performances are being ignored by an outrageously biased and irresponsible media who only want a re-run of WWII for the umpteenth time on a football pitch.

Let’s be absolutely clear, an over-hyped game of football between two teams, one representing England and one representing Germany, is still ONLY A GAME! It is NOT that important.

What Is Education For?

2010-06-26T09:17:00.001+01:00

Back from holiday in a very civilised part of France, the Charentes Maritimes, to find that the LibDems in coalition have become everybody’s whipping boys. I guess the general message is there’s no gain without pain as I learnt when I was a member of Watford Harriers many years ago, and parts of me are still hurting (or is that simply old age?)

VAT rise - I think that was inevitable whoever had formed the government after the election. Is it regressive, strictly speaking, yes but the exempted items make it less so.

Public sector pay and pension freeze – again inevitable but if they think the private sector are going to be shamed into acting responsibly on the pay front, the Network Rail example simply proves that fat cats have no shame and that greed is a constant feature in human nature.

Do we really have any other choice but to grin and bear it? No we don’t, at least not until our sovereign debt has been reduced to an acceptable level and our banks re-discover the correct balance between prudence and risk.

The coalition, by moving to reduce corporation tax, has embarked on a risky strategy of relying on the private business sectors, both small and large, to pull the country back into growth and to expand employment. They think that the private sector is up to the task and will act collectively for the benefit of the country. Recent experience would suggest otherwise. Small businesses in general are particularly reluctant to take on additional staff at any time because of the onerous administrative requirements of our current employment legislation. Larger businesses are going to become increasingly reliant on short-term contracts and the use of agency staff to cover any labour shortages that their growth might generate.

For most people of working age, portfolio working will become the norm rather than the exception and a “job for life” will become a quaint anachronism. The real challenge in this is for our education system and its ability and preparedness to deliver truly transferable skills for new generations.

Our modern economy requires much less knowledge and much more skill from its workforce, but are our schools ready or even able to teach modern and transferable skills in preference to traditional knowledge? Judging by their eagerness to make sacred cows of their sixth forms, the answer seems to be an emphatic “No”.

What is required is a new approach to the question “What is education for?” Over recent years successive governments have sought to expand education, particularly higher education, in the mistaken belief that everyone needs more knowledge to serve a knowledge-based economy. But is this right? It would seem to me that the knowledge-based economy needs only a few with the knowledge and many with the skills to apply that knowledge to the benefit of the economy in particular and society in general.

Is it time to re-think our notions of “comprehensive education” and to recognise that some schools need to serve those that require knowledge and perhaps other, different schools need to concentrate on providing skills relevant to work in a modern economy. Is it time to stop kidding ourselves that, as far as education is concerned, one type of comprehensive education from 11 to 16 is suitable for all pupils?

Balance On Question Time

2010-05-28T08:11:00.002+01:00

Initially, I thought the absence of a government minister of cabinet rank on last night’s question time was a crass mistake on the part of a coalition government, but on reflection, I think I can understand why no such minister appeared.

The Question Time panel including Max Hastings, Alistair Campbell and Piers Morgan was rather overburdened with self-regarding hacks. Add Susan Kramer, a former MP and John Redwood MP a former Welsh Secretary, famous for miming Mae Hen Wlad Fy Nadau – badly, and you already have a rather unbalanced and lightweight panel. Replacing one of them with a political heavyweight makes little difference overall, and one heavyweight against four lightweights would have probably made for interesting television but poor debate.

The unfortunate consequence of this event is it has allowed the BBC to imply undue political influence from No 10, and Alistair Campbell to believe he is far more important than he really is. No, on balance, three hacks and two political lightweights is probably two hacks and one lightweight too many, and the producer of Question Time would be wise to bear that in mind. One final thought, is Piers Morgan morphing into a new Nigel Farage?

The Revisionist Gravy Train

2010-05-27T07:32:00.004+01:00

As I prepare to drive down to Hay-on-Wye for the first day of the famous literary festival, I am struck by the reports that former Labour ministers are busy hammering their keyboards or dictating to their ghost writers, political biographies which threaten or promise to give us the true story of the New Labour years.

This pre-supposes that such a ‘true story’ actually exists and that it is capable of being told. It also pre-supposes that there is someone, sufficiently articulate and untainted by the thirteen years of sleaze and spin, who is capable of telling it.

However, the prospect of informed insight into the Blair-Brown feud, the successive reincarnations of Peter Mandelson and our international role as George W’s poodle is quite mouth-watering.

Currently, I have a bookcase almost full of political biographies from 1979 –1992 which I really must clear out in order to make room for the latest revisionist histories. Why can’t I wean myself off this never-ending and ultimately pointless desire to understand how this country is governed? I must drop my delusion that reading political biography will eventually lead to some sort of enlightenment. Deep down I know that it won’t, there will simply be ever more contradictions. Yet… somehow I might, just might read one that actually will reveal something that is new and valuable, I will have some Damascene moment that makes me say: ”So that’s why he did it! Now I understand!”

By the way, how does one become a ghost writer? It might suit me in my declining years.

Is This The Proper Way To Treat Children?

2010-05-25T07:45:00.003+01:00

I can’t help feeling more than a little uneasy by the case of two boys, aged 10 and 11, convicted yesterday at the Old Bailey of the attempted rape of a girl aged 8.

What really astonishes and appalls me about this gross misapplication of the British justice system was the announcement that both boys had been placed on the sex offenders register. Just think about it, while still at primary school, the rest of their lives are already blighted for what seems to have been little more than childhood curiosity.

Three things about this case are deeply disturbing. Firstly, it has made me even more convinced that the age of criminal responsibility needs to be raised to at least 12 years. Ever since the tragic case of Jamie Bulger I have wondered what was going through the minds of those two boys eventually convicted of his murder. I am not suggesting that they didn’t know that what they were doing was wrong, but I seriously doubt whether they fully understood the awful and inevitable consequences of what they did, at the time they were doing it.

Secondly, this case was heard at the Old Bailey, the most senior criminal court in the land and what is more, an adult court. I don’t understand why this case could not have been heard in a Juvenile Court, well away from the media spotlight and without a jury. Surely, those responsible for bringing this case were being particularly vindictive by staging it at the Old Bailey. Why did they demand a show trial, for this is, in effect, what has happened?

Thirdly, what precisely is the public interest that justified bringing this case to court at all? Boys, aged 10 and 11, branded potential sex offenders with all the restrictions that implies for how they will have to live their daily lives, for the rest of their lives. Whose interest does this serve? The victim? I hardly think so. The public? Well I suppose it satisfies the salacious interest of some warped minds and sells a few more tabloid newspapers. The Criminal Justice System? No, just the opposite, this case has served only to highlight that, in Britain today, with our overcrowded prisons and our creaking probation service we continue to demand that our prurient interest in everything ‘sexual’ be satisfied.

In short, as a society, we have become unhealthily obsessed with and by, sex and sex offenders. We need to both grow up and lighten up. As Virginia Ironside asks in today’s Independent, “Did none of the jury have a normal childhood?”

A Leaky Ship Will Sink - Sooner Or Later

2010-05-23T15:24:00.001+01:00

One of the really annoying things about the late and little lamented Labour government was the constant leaking of major announcements to the media long before government proposals were put to the House of Commons. I had always imagined that these leaks were facilitated by right-leaning civil servants, eager to embarrass the government in whatever way they could.

With the advent of the coalition, I had fondly, and somewhat naively as it turns out, imagined that such leaks would be stemmed. Not so according to the Guardian's website.

Perhaps Nick Clegg should assume the responsibility for overseeing government announcements and berating or sacking recalcitrant civil servants who are simply unable to resist the bribes being offered by the voracious print media. If the source is a ministerial advisor, immediate sacking and public shaming is the only answer. If we are serious about cleaning up politics, then the toughest possible line has to be taken and heads must roll.

Sir Gus O’Donnell has to make it absolutely clear that if any civil servant is found to be the origin of these leaks, that person will be sacked immediately and forfeit his or her pension rights. However it is done, and whoever assumes responsibility, these leaks must be stopped. For this not to happen reveals a government out of control, and this cannot be tolerated at any stage in the life of a government, let alone within its first couple of weeks.

If this coalition is to survive beyond Christmas,these leaks must be stopped.

A Europe Less Remote?

2010-05-22T10:37:00.010+01:00

Last night I attended an interesting event at the Pierhead building in Cardiff. Organised by the Foreign Policy Centre and the EC Representative in the UK, the event was a debate entitled Reconnecting the European Parliament and its People, it was chaired by former First Minister, Rhodri Morgan AM and featured all four of Wales’ MEPs together with Dr Adam Marshall of the British Chambers of Commerce.

Rhodri Morgan opened with an explanation of territorial cohesion and the recent announcement that the allocation of EU structural funds from 2013 would not be the sole responsibility of members’ national governments, the European Parliament having been given “co-decision” rights. This is likely to result in all 27 member countries receiving structural funds to address regional economic disparity, rather than the bulk structural funding being allocated to the new Eastern European members as had been feared. We then had eight minutes from each of the MEPs.

Dr Kay Swinburne acknowledged that for many of its citizens, the European Union seems remote and that in general, MEPs were not engaging well enough. Few people understood the role of MEPs and that they were perceived differently from member state to member state. She emphasised that compromise was important in the European Parliament and that much of her work involves negotiation. She endeavours to spend as much time as possible in Wales and is very keen on visiting schools and businesses. Her priorities for the future included, Europe 2020, the completion of the Single market, Global warming/Climate change, a co-ordinated response to the financial crisis, less “gold plating” by national parliaments and a more open media coverage of EU issues.

Derek Vaughan pointed to the huge benefits that Wales derives from European legislation, particularly in the sphere of environmental and social matters. He emphasised the importance of EU structural funding for Wales especially in West Wales and the Valleys which qualify for convergence funding. He is seeking to secure transitional funding for those areas who are unfortunate enough to drop out of convergence.

Dr Adam Marshall was keen to impress on all four MEPs the importance of them engaging with businesses in Wales and emphasised that currently businesses feel isolated from the EU and powerless to influence its work. He concluded with a number of suggestions as to how the situation could be improved.

John Bufton, while keen to emphasise that he had not “gone native”, was significantly more constructive than one would expect from a UKIP member. He strongly attacked the lack of good media coverage on Europe and had found that letters to the editors of local newspapers were effective for getting his views across. However, I thought he was being quite disingenuous in trying to justify Nigel Farage’s imbecilic attack on Herman van Rompuy, President of the European Council, as having been motivated only by a desire to secure press coverage for the European Parliament.

Nigel Farage being Nigel Farage

Finally, Jill Evans, the longest-serving of our four MEPs re-iterated much of what had already been said and pointed to her successful work in securing semi-official status for the Welsh language in the European parliament. She is keen that Wales should have a European Parliament Office in Wales.

All four MEPs were keen to emphasise that they were committed to working together for the benefit of Wales, having regular formal meetings as well as co-operating informally. There was limited time for questions afterwards and these turned on the future of the Euro, the possible enlargement of the EU, and the EU and Israel.

Overall, an enjoyable debate and well worth the effort of travelling to Cardiff for it.

Back To The Parish Pump

2010-05-19T11:36:00.009+01:00

Residents of Llandrindod are nothing if not perverse. In the space of a week Cllr Gary Price, who you may remember stormed out of the town council in a hissy fit a year ago, and who then forced an expensive by-election to get himself re-elected, now finds himself both Mayor of Llandrindod and on the Board of Powys County Council. These two posts, together with his full-time job as a postman, should keep him busy over the next year or so, but will they keep him out of mischief?

Cllr Price, who once claimed to be the only truly Independent County Councillor on Powys County Council, has not only thrown his lot in with the Shire Independents, formerly the Mongomeryshire Independents, he was extremely active during the recent general election campaign supporting the Conservatives. Perhaps being elected Mayor was a reward for his valiant efforts? Or is he simply paving the way to join the Conservative Group on Powys County Council? But even this doesn't explain why Cllr Price publicly endorsed the Christian Party's Martin Wiltshire in the recent by-election for Llandrindod Town Council. He clearly doesn’t quite get what it means to be an Independent, or perhaps he is simply very confused.

One of the unsuppressible correspondents to our local press, (I referred to him recently as an "inveterate correspondent" , but this resulted in personal abuse), last week bemoaned the poor showing of his friend Jeff Green in the general election. Jeff managed just 222 votes for the Welsh Christian Party in Brecon and Radnorshire, however it was this correspondent's reasoning in last week’s Mid Wales Journal that fascinated me:

"Pity Jeff Green of the Christian Party didn’t do a little better. Christians have been around for centuries; how beneficial it would have been to see a member of this party as our MP.

We were all christened, and in days gone by, were married in Christian churches, later also these Christian churches were used to say ‘goodbye’ to this life – we are all equal then…" Yes, quite, but is that an even remotely valid reason why people should vote for the Welsh Christian Party?

In today’s Brecon & Radnor Express there is another letter from this same correspondent, paying tribute to Gordon Brown and then this:

"Whilst writing this letter I watched the BBC news and saw the result of bribery and corruption. I never used to think that politicians had any principles – now I know it to be a fact of life. One leans to the left or right and I will give you two guesses which of the parties I favour."

No, not all of us necessarily lean to the left or to the right, that’s the old politics. These days we seek to create effective governments and make things happen, and this involves ditching old-fashioned labels like New Labour and Modern Conservatives, no-one is fooled by these attempted re-brandings. What matters now is who is prepared to work with whom for benefit of all. If you are not prepared to work with others, you are simply not in the game.

We Are All Progressives Now

2010-05-16T11:21:00.005+01:00

Two expressions that have been much used recently, indeed they have probably been overused, are the “re-alignment of the Left, or centre-Left” and “Progressive Alliance”.

The first, an idea that I can remember as long ago as 1970 when I was briefly the Chairman of WYLO, the Welsh Young Liberal Organisation. At that time the leadership of Young Liberals was dominated by the Putney Set, people like Louis Eaks and a certain Peter Hain (whatever happened to him?). They liked to regard themselves as “Libertarian Socialists”, a term I never fully understood, but took to imply a kind of Fabian socialism firmly wedded notions of individual liberty rather than authoritarianism. Heady days, and a time characterised by talk of the re-alignment of the Left, and that is the point, it was just talk, no-one ever did anything. This Utopian dream where sensible people with notions of social justice and mixed economies would join together to defeat the forces of unbridled capitalism. This notion frequently surfaces after Labour has lost office, burns brightly but briefly, flickers and is eventually expunged. The ideal remains but the will to make it happen dissipates.

Now we have talk of a progressive alliance, but one founded on the negative principle of keeping the Conservatives out of government. The notion of Labour and the Liberal Democrats coming together with various other “progressives” motivated by a deep-rooted antagonism to Conservatives in general, and the Conservative Right in particular. Even Charles Kennedy in his letter to the Observer today talks about a progressive coalition:

Like many others I was keen to explore the possibilities of a so-called "progressive coalition", despite all the obvious difficulties and drawbacks. It remains a matter of profound disappointment that there was insufficient reciprocal will within the Labour party – and they should not be allowed to pose in opposition purity as a result.

Unfortunately, this idea was never a runner, not only because the numbers didn’t stack up, but more importantly because it is based on the “anybody but them” principle, common among soccer fans envious of the undoubted successes of Manchester United over recent years. If we can’t win it, whatever “it” is, then anybody but United. It is notion founded upon envy, and not a basis for good governance.

On the Andrew Marr Show this morning I thought I heard David Cameron claim to have formed a “progressive alliance” with the Liberal Democrats by joining them in coalition, but perhaps my ears were deceiving me. However, I am sure I heard Cameron clearly describe himself as a Liberal Conservative, that is Liberal with a big “L”, and thus seeming to emphasise the profound change that has overcome British politics in the last week or so. How this will go down in the nether regions of the Conservative Party remains to be seen.

Meanwhile, we are all progressives now, but whether this turns out to be anything more than a vacuous label is very doubtful. The really progressive change that we must all work for has to be securing a positive outcome to the promised referendum on voting reform. If we achieve that, then we will have made genuine progress and can justify the claim to be progressive.

An Arranged Marriage Rather Than A Passionate Affair

2010-05-13T16:31:00.000+01:00

I’m beginning to get a little irritated by the people who seem to be going out of their way to tell me that they didn’t vote Lib Dem for them to jump into bed with the Tories, amazingly enough, neither did I.

Firstly, I am not at all sure that all the people who now say they voted Lib Dem did actually do so, and secondly, it is alarmingly apparent that very, very few people have the slightest understanding about what being in coalition actually means, and this includes many journalists who seem ‘wedded’ to allusions of romance and marriage between the unlikeliest of couples. (I hope you will forgive my use of the same allusion).

This coalition is a hastily arranged marriage rather than a passionate affair. It is a marriage of convenience, speedily put together with the national, rather than party interest at the forefront. Britain, at this time of economic crisis needed the most stable government it could possibly have, given the result of last Thursday’s general election. Yes, the inclination of most Liberal Democrats is towards Labour rather than the Conservatives, but that had little or no prospect of stability in the short term, let alone for the life of a parliament. The figures just didn’t stack up, even if one was prepared to incorporate the SNP and Plaid, and that was not without its own particular risks. Coalition with a leaderless Labour Party just out of office after thirteen years was simply not a realistic possibility.

Clearly, the Liberal Democrats were between a rock and a hard place. The only hope of reasonable stability had to be a deal with the Conservatives, the other alternative, a minority Conservative government was theoretically possible, but for how long? Certainly not long enough to steady the financial markets. No, it was Hobson’s choice, the Conservatives or instability and given that this was the case, both negotiating teams appear to have set about the task of hammering out a coalition deal with an admirable sense of purpose. How long will it last? nobody knows. Will it work? It’s far too early to say.

Things will be clearer when we stop doing our Richard Wilson impressions, you know, pacing up and down muttering “I don’t believe it! I simply don’t believe it!” It’s a coalition not an earthquake, nobody died because of the agreement between the Conservatives and the Lib Dems. A coalition has been formed, and now it has to work. Get over it!

There Is Hope, I Think

2010-05-13T10:48:00.002+01:00

Lucy Mangan's piece on today's Guardian website is simply too good not to have as wide a readership as possible among my fellow disgruntled Liberal Democrats and the few Labour-inclined friends I have left. Enjoy!

Congratulations Ashfield And Talgarth

2010-05-13T09:23:00.002+01:00

Congratulations to Ashfield Community Enterprises and to the Talgarth Green Energy project on gaining £400,000 each for the establishment of their community enterprises.

Both projects should be able to achieve some much-needed regeneration of their local communities. That they have been successful in securing this funding through the Village SOS scheme is a massive tribute to the vision, dedication and hard work of a group of committed individuals in Llandrindod/Howey and Talgarth who were simply not prepared to succumb to the many and varied obstacles that they were faced with. In that, they are an example to us all.

It is also worth mentioning that both projects were actively supported by their respective Liberal Democrat county councillors, Les Davies in the case of Ashfield, and Bill Powell in the case of Talgarth. Well done chaps, you really do work hard for your communities.

From New Labour To New Politics

2010-05-12T08:36:00.004+01:00

Well, this so-called New Politics is absolutely fascinating. Five Cabinet seats for Liberal Democrats and Nick Clegg as Deputy Prime Minister, who’d have thought it on Thursday night?

Given the fight with the Conservatives that has just taken place in Brecon & Radnorshire, this is going to be difficult for all of us, we don’t have to like it but we are bound to try to make it work. We need to hold our noses and see how this coalition develops. The positives that appear to have been agreed so far include, the raising the income tax threshold is going to be crucial in helping families on low incomes cope with the pain of the public spending cuts that we will all experience over the next few years, the putting in hold the inheritance tax breaks for the super rich, something on voting reform and fixed, five-year parliaments.

However, Liberal Democrats in cabinet, and in parliament need to continue to press for a common sense, pragmatic approach to some outstanding issues. These are just three:

It is quite objectionable that Conservative Members of the European Parliament have been dispatched to the edge of the European Parliament, aligned with what Nick Clegg in one of the Leaders Debates, accurately described as “a bunch of nutters”. If we accept that much of the powerplay in Europe takes place within the two main groups, the Socialists and the European Peoples Party (EPP), it is utterly bizarre that Cameron had taken his MEPs out of the EPP and away from any possibility of influencing the European Parliamentary agenda. If the New Politics is to extend beyond our shores then Cameron needs to get his MEPs back in the EPP as soon as possible.

The cap on non-EU immigration is neither here nor there, the numbers are insignificant. What is an issue is all those thousands of illegal immigrants already here and working in the black economy, continually exploited by crooked gang-masters, paying no taxes and not contributing to British society, ‘Big’ or otherwise. This is a twilight world where the cheap, illegal migrant labour benefits criminals and businesses willing to turn a blind eye to the reality of the lives of the immigrants. This problem is not likely to disappear of its own accord, but it could be sorted by offering the illegal immigrants who want to stay here a route to citizenship. Such a route would require the satisfying of conditions for example, the ability to speak English, the completion of a period of community service. By failing to address this issue, it can be argued that the government is condoning criminality.

Trident has to be part of a thorough defence review and if it is to be replaced by a like-for-like weapons system, the case for doing so has to be absolutely watertight, like the submarines that carry it.

The most important question that has still to be resolved, and the one that might yet put this coalition in difficulty, is the detail of what is proposed on reforming the political system. The anachronistic First Past The Post (FPTP) system of voting has to go, and in the lifetime of this parliament. This is not a party political issue, it is a national issue and all progressives, however they are defined, need to come together to ensure that this goal is achieved. It is clear that there are both Conservative and Labour MPs and activists who remain firmly wedded to the grossly unfair FPTP, and if a referendum on this issue is eventually held, they will campaign fiercely to prevent any change in the voting system. The new Labour Leader, whoever that may be, will need to bring Labour MPs and activists around to accepting voting reform, and to campaign actively to achieve it. Equally, Conservatives of good will, and I am sure some do exist, who recognise the unfairness of the current voting system, must pitch in on the side of fairness and help to achieve voting reform. The Liberal Democrats cannot achieve electoral reform on their own, but they can and must, help to build a coalition of the willing to achieve a positive outcome in any referendum that is offered.

Head Versus Heart?

2010-05-11T12:06:00.001+01:00

The drizzle has finally stopped, I’ve checked and tidied up our local recycling depot and I should now be out in the garden hoeing the potatoes and what am I doing? Glued to BBC News channel anxiously waiting further developments in this apparently endless round of negotiations. After a fairly calm couple of days, I confess that the tension is beginning to get to me. I am shouting at the TV, not a good sign. I shouted at John Reid last night, I shouted at Malcolm Rifkind this morning. Yesterday’s men both of them, and neither having anything constructive to offer.

This really is a heart versus head conflict for me, my heart would incline towards a progressive alliance with Labour but the numbers simply don’t stack up, even taking the Nationalists into account. My head tells me that our first priority must be a strong and stable government and the addressing of the financial deficit. But supporting the Tories? Ughh! Talk about “supping with the devil”, this could be far worse.

A loose, supply and confidence arrangement with the Tories with a referendum on AV+ rather than simple AV may be the best we can make of this horrible situation. It’s one thing to talk glibly about hung parliaments and coalitions before the event, it’s quite another to actually build the trust necessary to create the compromises required to form a coalition when the event has taken place.

Good luck to our negotiating team, I don’t envy you one bit, but I’m not going to blame you afterwards.

Election Poscript

2010-05-10T16:03:00.005+01:00

I am not sure whether this advice to voters should not also apply to the negotiations currently underway.

Thanks to Jo, a friend of my daughter's, in West Sussex for this photo.

It's Europe Day!

2010-05-09T14:51:00.004+01:00

Today, the 9th of May, is Europe Day and a chance to celebrate all things European, and I suppose one of the better outcomes of the recent election is the decline in the support of UKIP and the BNP, both avowedly anti-European.

In spite of the current crisis in the Eurozone, the European project is still on track and still delivering substantial benefits for all 27 member states. However, there are challenges ahead and this is how they are summarised in a recent European Commission document:

"Global competition is intensifying, providing both an opportunity and a test. Knowledge and innovation are becoming more and more central to commercial success. An ageing population requires society to adapt. The limits to the supply of essential resources, like energy, are clearer than ever. And climate change threatens future generations with the spectre of huge damage to our environment, our livlihoods and our stability. Sustainable development requires the EU to chart the right path forward."

I would argue that it is not only energy security that is a challenge, but food security also and I note that it was the Green Party that made this point in its election literature. Here in Powys, we are well placed to become self-sufficient in food and even become a net food exporter, however this can only be achieved through a thorough overhaul of the Common Agricultural Policy. Our elected politicians in Powys, Wales and the UK need to put far greater effort into making the European Union work for us and in Powys this means a better deal for agriculture so that food miles are reduced and farm incomes increased. of course farmers need to cotinue to diversify, but they also need to concentrate on their core business - the production of food.

As consumers we can help this process by monitoring the supermarkets, finding out where their food comes from and challenging the supermarkets to obtain their produce locally wherever possible. If ideas of localism are to be translated into action then we need to stimulate demand for locally-produced food products.

Localism also includes supporting local retail outlets regardless of what they sell. Over a year ago I, on behalf of the Spa Town Trust, initiated the Buy Local campaign in Llandrindod and I had hoped that local traders would take the idea forward. However, they have been content simply to display the poster that the Spa Town Trust provided for them. It's going to take more than that to counter the influence of the supermarkets. The coming of Tesco may help to stem the retail leakage to other areas, but that alone will not be enough to preserve our high street shops. We need to both increase the variety and quality of the local retail offer and continue to persuade local residents to support our local businesses. As consumers we can help make a difference, let's do it, let's make a concentrated to buy local whenever we can and thereby help to make our communities really sustainable.

The New Politics In Smith Square

2010-05-08T22:34:00.004+01:00

I don't normally watch TV on a Saturday afternoon but today was the exception. I am just wondering if I would look good in purple?

There is a momentum building for electoral reform and somehow we have to make the Conservatives understand that this issue will not go away, it has to be resolved and soon.

Can Any Deal Last?

2010-05-08T11:45:00.002+01:00

As the horse-trading between the Conservative and Liberal Democrat teams continues in rooms at the cabinet office the whole country seems to be waiting with baited breath. I still have little idea of who precisely is talking to whom, nevertheless it is clear that any deal done, if indeed a deal is concluded, will have to sold very carefully to the respective party faithful.

When the proposed Rainbow Coalition between Plaid, the Welsh Conservatives and the Welsh Liberal Democrats was being negotiated by the three party teams after the Welsh Assembly elections of 2007, I was among many Welsh Liberal Democrat Party members who opposed the deal.

Fundamentally, I didn’t think the deal was good enough for the Welsh Liberal Democrats, nor did I think that there was anything like sufficient common ground between the respective ideologies of the three quite disparate parties but crucially, I felt that both Plaid and the Welsh Conservatives were more concerned to grasp power at any cost than they were to ensure the good governance of Wales under a decidedly unsympathetic New Labour government at Westminster. In the event, a hastily called special conference of the Welsh Liberal Democrats held at the Metropole in Llandrindod eventually endorsed the proposed deal but by then Ieuan Wyn Jones had jumped into the arms of Rhodri Morgan and the rest is history.

What is there to be learned from that particular experience? For me, it is that negotiating teams tasked with hammering out such deals are working in a bubble, they work extremely hard and with the noblest of intentions and I am sure, they genuinely believe in the worth of the outcome they finally propose. However to my mind the process starts in the wrong place. It is predicated on the minutiae of what is contained in the manifestos on which the parties have just fought the election and what is contained in these manifestos is merely a snapshot of those issues which the parties felt were important at that particular point in time. However, it is quite likely that where a superficial comparison of individual clauses of particular manifestos suggests some common ground between the parties, put into the context and the experience of the actual campaign and the feedback from the electorate during it, no such common ground actually exists. Not only that, during the campaigns other parties will have spun what is contained in a particular manifesto for their own advantage and in so doing, they may have so exaggerated the differences between their positions on issues that they now find impossible to close and compromise is simply no longer possible.

The most difficult task that any negotiating team faces is that of selling the compromise to their members, and the most vocal members are likely to be the activists who are already wound up from four weeks of campaigning and countering their opponents ‘dirty tricks’ real or imagined, and have little appetite for compromise at this particular moment. It is very tricky and not everyone will be satisfied whatever the outcome. The selling of the deal is likely to be more difficult for the Cameron Team than for the Clegg Team, because there is considerable doubt about how united the Conservative Party currently is. Just as Euroscepticism became a running sore for the Conservatives in the 80s and 90s, so might any deal with the Liberal Democrats become a running sore for them now.

Cameron's Taking The P***

2010-05-07T15:47:00.000+01:00

David Cameron’s offer to the Liberal Democrats is neither big, nor is it open, nor is it comprehensive, and this is clear because he immediately ruled out any possible compromise on matters to do with Europe, immigration and Trident.

A Committee of Inquiry into Electoral Reform is merely a delaying tactic and is even less likely to produce meaningful change than the Jenkins Commission of the late 90s.

No, David Cameron, you will have to do better than this, a lot better. You’re simply taking the p***.

The Good, The Bad And The Ugly

2010-05-07T10:28:00.001+01:00

When it comes to the crunch, thinking about voting Liberal Democrat is a lot easier than actually voting Liberal Democrat. If you think about voting Liberal Democrat and tell the pollsters you are thinking about it, they get all excited. However today, it turns out that you were only teasing, you rotters!

It would appear that when the many undecided voters got into their polling booths they reverted to type, plumping for either the Conservatives or for Labour and, unfortunately, not quite summoning up the courage to try the Liberal Democrats. When faced with a choice between real change and cosmetic change, they went for appearances, after all, it's easier to slap on a bit of make-up than to undergo cosmetic surgery (or so I’m told). My father had a theory that most people are fundamentally conservative, and in difficult times British people they will tend towards the Conservatives as some kind of safe haven. Sad but possibly, true.

The good thing about this election was that there was a modest increase in overall turnout. Certainly I got the impression that significantly more younger voters were making the effort to venture into the polling stations. This can only be good for our democracy.

The bad thing about this election has to be the ratio of seats to votes. The Conservatives look to have won just under half the number of seats available with just over 36% of the popular vote. This is a damning condemnation of the First Past The Post (FPTP) system, it is both antediluvian and anti-democratic, but it is going to be very difficult to change it. Perhaps this will be the first real test for Labour in the immediate future, and it will be interesting to see if their pre-election commitment to a fairer voting system actually materialises. I somehow doubt that they are serious about electoral reform. After all, Labour is hugely advantaged by FPTP.

The ugly aspect of this election has been the personal vilification of Gordon Brown, and to a lesser extent, other high profile politicians. The Conservatives and UKIP have repeated the mantra “No, to five more years of Gordon Brown” so often that it became the defining slogan of the election, and it is negative in the extreme. Forget the fluff of notions like the ‘big society’ and the so-called ‘tax on jobs’, what really got the right-wingers going was the demonising of Gordon Brown. It wasn’t all one way, however, the emphasis that Labour tried to place on the privileged background and education of the leading Conservatives was equally unpleasant.

Now we have to let the dust settle momentarily before the horse-trading begins. At least we live in interesting times!

We Need To Change The Layout Of The Commons Chamber

2010-05-06T11:47:00.004+01:00

Whatever the outcome of today's day of reckoning, there is a simple change that could be made to improve the way we do politics at Westminster, and it will be up to the new Speaker to make it happen.

Part of the problem at Westminster and a real encouragement to the two party domination that has served us so badly, lies in the layout of the House of Commons chamber itself. The collegial layout of the chamber, with rows of baying members facing each other encourages the snarling exchanges at Prime Ministers Questions and, since this is all most people get to see of our democracy in action, this is how they believe all parliamentary business is conducted.

However, most other well-established democracies have long since abandoned the collegial layout in favour of some sort of semi-circle or horseshoe layout, common in both the Scottish Parliament and the Welsh Assembly as well as in council chambers across the land. Such a layout encourages a consensual rather than a confrontational engagement and also implicitly recognises that not all members form either the government or the official opposition.

Thus a simple way of improving the way we do politics would be to change the layout of the House of Commons, sling out the long benches and give members a comfortable chair, a desk with access to modern communications and allow them to do their difficult jobs more effectively.

It's The Policies That Are Important

2010-05-05T08:37:00.004+01:00

In Brecon & Radnorshire we have eight candidates: Christian Party, Conservative, Green, Labour, Liberal Democrat, Monster Raving Loony, Plaid Cymru and UKIP. I will be voting Liberal Democrat, as I have done in every election since I turned 18, and tomorrow I will do so with even greater conviction.

The Christian Party can be rejected fairly easily, I don’t want to see a return of corporal punishment in schools, it is brutal and barbaric, and I don’t want creationism taught in state schools, in fact I really want faith schools taken out of the state education system. So, “No” to the Christian Party.

I don’t think I have ever been tempted to vote Conservative, for me it is a matter of trust, and I simply don’t trust the Conservatives. So quite apart from their lowering of Inheritance Tax for their wealthy friends, their absurd position on everything to do with Europe, their many U-turns on the economy and their affection for an outdated and blatantly unfair electoral system, I would find it very difficult to even consider voting Conservative.

Labour is, well, Labour not so much New as shop-soiled and clapped out. What can I say? Thirteen years of disappointment including taking Britain into an illegal war in Iraq, failure to place Britain at the heart of Europe and perhaps the most damning of all, encouraging the unrestricted access to credit and thereby fuelling the “have now, pay later” seduction of the British people, and this from a man who, as Chancellor, promoted a reputation for prudence and as Prime Minister has been anything but prudent. No, I have never voted Labour before and I certainly couldn’t do so now, their claims to be progressive ring so hollow.

Plaid, are quite irrelevant in a Westminster election and no matter how hard they try to make us forget it, there are fundamentally nationalist. So whenever I think about Plaid, I am reminded of what A C Grayling says about nationalism in his book: The Meaning of Things.

"Nationalism is evil. It causes wars, its roots lie in xenophobia and racism, it is a recent phenomenon – an invention of the last few centuries – which has been of immense service to demagogues and tyrants but to no one else. Disguised as patriotism and love of one’s country, it trades on the unreason of mass psychology to make a variety of horrors seem acceptable, even honourable…"

UKIP seems to me to have all the attributes of little Englander nationalism but applied to the United Kingdom as a whole rather than simply to Wales and I reject it for the same reasons that I reject Plaid.

The Monster Raving Loony Party, as its name suggests, is not to be taken seriously, its only purpose is to make elections marginally more interesting, sometimes it succeeds, mostly it doesn’t. We all love them but we would never dream of voting for them.

The Green Party has some attractive policies, mainly to do with the environment, and therein lies the rub. There is so much more to the governance of Britain than the environment. There may be a feelgood factor in voting Green, but ultimately that is to give pre-eminence to the environment over all other issues, and I am not yet ready to do that.

So tomorrow, I shall be voting Liberal Democrat, sincerely hoping for serious and meaningful electoral reform, open and genuine debate about the European Union, a sensible reform of the tax system and the recreation of a genuinely mixed economy where there is collective provision of essential services – health, defence, security, education, etc – and competitive provision of goods and services where competition works to lower prices and generate normal profits. It is a difficult balance to achieve but one that is ultimately more efficient than the monopoly of the state and the chaos of the unfettered free market. Above all, I am hoping for an end to the two party system characterised by its subservience to a rampant and insidious media owned by a few precious individuals who seem able to manipulate both Labour or Conservative governments to their own advantage.

A Good Election To Lose?

2010-04-30T07:25:00.001+01:00

So the leaders’ debates are over, and they have been both fascinating and revealing, especially this last one. Brown was much better than he had been but not good enough. Cameron was all smooth charm (is that where we get the word ‘smarm’ from?) but because he burnt his bridges on the Euro, forgetting the old adage “never say never”, he has placed the Conservatives firmly among the ‘little Englanders’. Indeed we can now legitimately ask, “is there a cigarette paper between the Conservatives, UKIP and the BNP?” Clegg stood up well to the massive assault from the other two who had reverted to the style and rhetoric of PMQs. Moreover, Clegg proved that he could argue for policies on both the Euro and immigration that he knew would not be popular with our increasingly isolationist and xenophobic media. Clegg is a man of courage and last night he proved it.

However, it was what was left unsaid that is probably more important than what was said. We got no clear statements on the magnitude of the economic problems which the incoming government would face, but rumours were circulating about a fascinating comment from Mervyn King, Governor of the Bank of England. Apparently in a private conversation, and Gordon Brown knows all about those, King is reported to have predicted that the austerity measures that any incoming government would necessarily have to take would be so severe and unpopular that the governing party, whether it be Labour, Conservative, or some sort of coalition, would subsequently be out of office for a generation.

I think Gordon Brown knows this and has known it for some time, and it is this knowledge that has coloured his, and Labour’s, approach to this election campaign. Gordon Brown and the Labour Party know that this particular general election is a good election to lose, and this is why they have been so coy about presenting the truth about our dire economic situation and the pain that will be necessary for all of us if it is to be turned around. This is why Brown was so scathing about the inheritance tax break offered by the Conservatives and the child tax credit reduction proposed by both the Conservatives and, to a lesser extent, by the Liberal Democrats.

Gordon Brown is stuck between a rock and a hard place. He clearly does not want to go down as a Prime Minister to lose an election after just two years in office, yet he sees the increasingly remote possibility of a Labour victory as nothing other than a poisoned chalice. Under such circumstances, you have to be particularly unfeeling not to have some sympathy for Gordon Brown and the predicament he finds himself in, not all of it of his own making.

Fair-Weather Friends?

2010-04-29T12:19:00.004+01:00

Today's Guardian has an interesting letter from Richard Reeves et al. A welcome, if somewhat belated, show of support. This is probably the most telling paragraph:

"The liberal surge has shaken the establishment to its foundations. The Liberal Democrats, a party that owes nothing to big business, the Murdoch press or the trade unions, could form the vanguard of a great, reforming parliament. You only need to look at the desperate attempts of the rightwing press to uncover some past indiscretion on Clegg's part to see what a revolutionary figure he could be. His only debt will be to the electorate. Clegg has argued that this is a "liberal moment". Sadly, that's probably not true. But it is certainly a democratic moment."

Let's hope that this support can endure the tough times that are sure to come and remain steadfast in the desire for a fairer and more democratic voting system.

Gordon Brown's Aides Must Accept Responsibilty

2010-04-29T08:03:00.004+01:00

An extract from John Prescott’s campaign blog has been taken up by the Guardian and in it he rightly castigates the Murdoch media empire for its anti-Labour frenzy. He emphasises that it was a Sky News microphone that facilitated the recording of Gordon Brown’s tetchy conversation with an aide as his car drove away from his original encounter with Mrs Duffy. The subsequent exploitation of this recording by a Sky News producer does leave a nasty taste. As I understand it, it was this Sky News producer who gleefully tells Mrs Duffy what was said by Gordon Brown as the car drove off, clearly anticipating the horrified response that was caught by a raft of TV cameras.

While it is true that News International does indeed exercise a pernicious influence over the policies and direction of both the Conservatives and the Labour Party, Gordon Brown’s aides - the political advisors and press officers - bear the greater responsibility for this particular incident. That they did not disconnect him from the microphone has allowed the country to have the doubts about Brown’s character, raised recently by Andrew Rawnsley, confirmed.

The later face-to-face apology was undoubtedly the right course of action, however Gordon Brown’s subsequent reporting of it on Mrs Duffy’s doorstep was little short of cringe-making. The fixed grin, the vacuous words were acutely embarrassing even to Labour’s opponents.

Brown’s performance in tonight’s Leaders Debate now becomes even more crucial. Anything less than brilliant simply won’t be enough.

The Trick Is Knowing When To Stop

2010-04-28T15:07:00.000+01:00

After years of trying to make us think that he was some sort of economics superman, Gordon Brown’s recent gaffe in Rochdale proves that he is only too human after all. He must really be as tired and fed up as he looks, and who can blame him, thirteen years of high office as both Chancellor of the Exchequer and more recently Prime Minister must takes its toll.

The trick for those who achieve high office is knowing when to stop. Arguably, most holders of high office go on too long, their enthusiasm for the job may still be there, their belief in their destiny may remain a driving force, but there ability to continue at the frenetic pace that these high offices of state require must inevitably diminish.

Presumably, Americans recognise this and that is why for American Presidents it’s two terms and no more, that’s two four-year terms and enough is enough, both for the incumbent and the electorate.

In theory, the UK’s system of cabinet government should be slightly less onerous. However, the recent trend towards executive, rather than collective, decision-making, the increased power acquired by the Prime Minister’s Office and the relegation of the Cabinet in the decision-making processes must put tremendous strain on whoever is Prime Minister. Add to that the role of Leader of an often fractious party with many colleagues enviously eyeing your job and constantly seeking opportunities to usurp your authority, and you begin to have a case for finding some way to limit the Prime Ministerial term.

I have no practical suggestion as to how this should be down, but I do think it needs to be discussed and should be included in a long overdue review of our system of governance.

Come On Labour, Tell Us The Truth

2010-04-28T08:28:00.005+01:00

Honesty is always the best policy, most of us learned this at our mother’s knee, and in this last week of the campaign we now need some honesty from the Labour party who have governed the United Kingdom for the last thirteen years.

We need some honesty about the size of the public sector deficit, the structure of it, how pressing are our creditors and whether or not our international credit rating is seriously under threat. No scaremongering, just facts. Next we need all parties contesting this election to give a clear indication of how they intend to restore fiscal balance should they be elected a week next Thursday.

I am moved to ask for this in the light of the downgrading of Greece’s credit rating to ‘junk’ status, and I see parallels between Greece’s plight and the potential for the United Kingdom if our politicians don’t level with the electorate.

In recent years both countries have experienced the availability of relatively easy credit. To an extent both countries have in their different ways embarked on significant public spending commitments, with Greece it was the 2004 summer Olympic Games, in the UK it ranged from projects like the Millennium Dome to military adventurism in Iraq. Both countries have been hit by the global economic downturn leading to increased spending on social welfare and a reduction in tax revenues, and certainly in Greece, as the former government attempted to disguise the extent of the problem, doubts were raised about the accuracy of the government’s economic statistics.

In Greece, this uncertainty about the extent of the economic problem and the government’s continued prevarication, resulted in higher interest rates being charged on government debt and possibly a greater incentive towards tax evasion. It is quite possible that in the UK there has been a more intense exploitation of tax loopholes which the Labour government has failed to address adequately. In Greece they have had riots in the streets as the incoming government has sought to implement a raft of austerity measures to show its determination to tackle its deficit and to allow it to access international financial support via the Eurozone and the IMF.

It is worth pointing out that the UK is spending significant sums of public money preparing for the summer Olympic Games in London in 2012, is still involved in a military adventure in Afghanistan and has recently had a government that appears to have steadfastly refused to come clean about the extent of the fiscal deficit.

What would really upset me, and I presume many others, is, if after May 6th, the incoming government finds itself forced to put in place a quite devastating raft of austerity measures in the face of a much worse economic reality than we currently appreciate and then exhorts us all to ‘tighten our belts’ and put up with an increased rate of VAT, increased National Insurance contributions, increased fuel duty etc and at the same time expects us to volunteer to contribute to the success of the Olympics. I think my honest answer would be, “On your bike!”

On a more serious note, it seems to me entirely possible that given the public’s disillusion with politics in the light of bankers’ bonuses and MPs expenses, and if the magnitude of our economic difficulties turns out to be much worse than Labour is currently letting on, there is the potential for public protests similar to those experienced at the time of the imposition of the Poll Tax and the invasion of Iraq. What price a successful Olympics then?

Why Is Class Still Relevant?

2010-04-27T08:49:00.004+01:00

During election campaigns is a good time for politics anoraks, and I include myself in this description, to take a few moments to reflect what it was that first stimulated their interest politics. I am fairly sure that if you are a genuine anorak, there was a distinct moment, an identifiable issue that set you thinking and eventually comparing what the various parties were offering, searching for the one that provided the best fit with your emerging political awareness.

For me it must have been in 1962 when, on the spur of the moment I decided to accompany my father to a Liberal meeting that was to be addressed by the then MP for Montgomeryshire, Emlyn Hoosen. This meeting was held, I think, in Builth or Brecon and I remember that it was quite packed and that I was a lot younger than anyone else present.

If I remember correctly Emlyn Hoosen talked about the merging of the North Wales and South Wales Liberal Federations and the creation of the Welsh Liberal Party, not merely a regional section of the national Liberal Party based in London, but a distinctive Welsh political party. Apparently, at that time, this was quite an innovation. He proceeded to outline his vision for the Welsh Liberal Party and much of this concerned devolution of government powers to Wales within a federal United Kingdom. However, what struck a chord with me was his analysis of the class based origins of both Labour and the Conservatives and, importantly, that Liberals were not bound by such tribalism but were genuinely classless.

It was this notion of a political party completely devoid of any class consciousness that I found compelling. Reflecting on that moment it wasn’t simply that the Liberals were class-less, they totally rejected the notion of categorising groups in society on the basis of class origin. Not only was this notion of class divisive, it was both demeaning and pointless. Having spent part of my childhood living with relatives in Switzerland where class seemed to be totally irrelevant, a classless society seemed to me to be so obviously right and sensible that I could not conceive why anyone want to pursue political objectives to promote or protect a particular class, (it was some years later that I had occasion to read Burke’s Reflection of the revolution in France and Marx and Engels’ The Communist Manifesto).

One of the sad things about the build up to this election campaign, and in a recent by-election campaign, has been the re-emergence of class as a political issue. Dominic Lawson in today’s Independent seemed to be similarly saddened. Few other modern European countries today are so class-obsessed as Britain continues to be, and I fail to understand why a person’s class origins are still considered to be relevant to British society.

There Will Be Blood!

2010-04-26T09:38:00.000+01:00

"Vote Clegg, Get Brown" shout some, "Vote Clegg, Get Cameron", shout others, "Vote Cameron, Get Murdoch" defines a Facebook group. All speculating how a deliberate vote for a particular candidate/party leader might have unintended consequences. Is this simply an indication of the classic third party squeeze, or is there more to it than that? Is it perhaps the death throes of the duopoly that has dominated British political life for so long? We may have some sort of answer on May 7th.

What is clear is that both Labour and Conservative parties have made serious errors in this campaign. Labour have made a serious mistake in going into this general election campaign with Gordon Brown as its leader. Most of the animosity towards Labour is directed more at the person of Gordon Brown than it is against Labour per se. The trouble is that most Labour stalwarts have believed the hype that Gordon Brown is the only British politician capable of leading the country out of the severe economic problems the country faces, and this is blatantly not true. Gordon Brown has become an electoral liability for Labour and almost every time he appears in front of the cameras, his failings become ever more obvious.

The Conservatives have made an even more calamitous mistake in believing that it is their turn to govern, and naively thinking that the electorate can be duped into believing that they represent change, real change, that is, not simply the cosmetic change of swapping the opposition benches for the government benches. Cameron, Osborne, Hague and Clarke are all guilty of pushing the notion of change for change sake, instead of presenting real change in their policy offer. If they win this election it really will be a triumph of style over substance. Conservative claims to be radical, progressive and different have been brutally exposed as they are forced to concentrate on their core support who by their very nature don’t want change. The last thing the Turnip Taliban in the shires want is genuine change, they want an alternative to Gordon Brown, who has become a serious hate figure for them, but the change they want is traditional conservatism viewed through their rose-tinted spectacles.

I think that the recriminations after May 7th will be even more interesting than the remaining few days until May 6th. There will be blood on the carpets at the party headquarters.

Concerned About Education? Now's Your Chance

2010-04-25T12:50:00.000+01:00

For those few readers I might have in the Llandrindod area, PACE (Powys Against Cuts in Education) are organising a general election hustings focussing on education at 7pm on Tuesday next, 27th April at Llandrindod High School. All eight candidates in Brecon and Radnorshire have been invited.

Although education is a devolved issue this forum nevertheless provides an opportunity to send appropriate messages to our politicians about how we think our education service should be organised and run.

So come and ask your questions, put the candidates on the spot about possible school closures, class sizes, the teaching of Creationism and bussing children miles for vocational options.

Onward Christian Soldiers, Marching Up The Hill

2010-04-24T08:39:00.004+01:00

My remote control button let me down last night and accidentally allowed me to catch some of the Welsh Christian Party election broadcast on ITV. At least I caught three sequences of it, I missed the beginning.

Firstly, someone whom I took to be Rev David Griffiths, the party’s candidate in Clwyd West, talking to camera with a background of a curtain partly covering a window. Secondly, the really funny bit, with Cllr Jeff Green in a military camouflage jacket, struggling purposefully up a Mid Wales hill carrying a furled St David’s standard, on reaching the summit he unfurls his flag and adopts his “medieval knight” pose. Then we see boots of various types also struggling purposefully uphill. These boots were gradually revealed to be a minibus-load people including another person in a camouflage jacket, joining Jeff at the summit. Was this an allusion to Onward Christian Soldiers, I wonder? Finally we had Jeff and his family being greeted in Middleton Street, Llandrindod Wells by the expansive David Griffiths with pieces to camera from Jeff’s wife, Sue, and eventually Jeff himself.

The voice over was bland and its substance indistinguishable from the UKIP or BNP agenda. Strangely, there was nothing about their stance on not allowing the redefinition of marriage; nothing about introducing the teaching of Creationism in schools and nothing about raising the motorway speed limit to 90mph, all of which had been in their draft manifesto.

In 2009, The Christian Party tried to persuade us that Y Draig Goch flag of Wales should be dropped in favour of the flag of St David which the Christian Party regards as a more appropriate allusion to a Christian Wales than the allegedly satanic dragon. This presumably explains why the gold cross on a black background seems to have been purloined by the Welsh Christian Party and why they made so much of it in their election broadcast.

The electorate will judge what the broadcast meant and how effective it was. For me, it lacked style, substance and conviction. It was as remarkable for what it didn’t say as it was for what was said. I’m not at all sure that efforts like this election broadcast are actually enhancing the cause of Christianity in Wales, it seems to me that they are more likely to detract from it. This broacast served onlt to confirm my secularist inclination.

A Vote For Democracy?

2010-04-23T18:27:00.002+01:00

Unlock Democracy has an interesting website that helps people to decide on the various merits of all the parties on issues to do with democracy. Well worth a quick look.

Europe: It's Good To Talk

2010-04-23T08:12:00.002+01:00

What next, I wonder? This fascinating general election will undoubtedly have more surprises for us over the next two weeks. I have to admit that in the long, slow phoney war that seem to start before Christmas and intensified afterwards, I had thought that this general election campaign was going to be the most boring ever. I also have to admit that I had great reservations about the appropriateness of the televised leaders’ debates given our British parliamentary system, after all we are not, and should not be electing a President/Head of State. We are electing MPs from whom will be drawn a Prime Minister to head up a cabinet government that is nominally, at least, accountable to parliament.

Well boring it certainly is not, although I still have misgivings about the cult of personality that is being promoted by the leaders’ debates, I am not at all sure that this enhances the notion of parliamentary democracy which is, after all, the cornerstone of what makes Britain distinctive and what makes most of us proud when we are in conversation with people from other countries.

The most interesting aspect of this particular election campaign is how closely every twist and turn is being followed by commentators and public in both the United States and in mainland Europe, and this interest has been generated by Nick Clegg rather than by David Cameron or Gordon Brown. In the States, the unusual aspect of a genuine three-party contest seems to be a revelation. In Europe, the idea that Britain, the EU's most awkward member state, may be led by someone who has been both an MEP and worked for the European Commission seems too good to be true, (and probably is).

I am beginning to hope that after years of hiding on the fringes of the European Union, we are ditching the tacit understanding among all three main parties that if you want electoral success the one thing you must never do is talk about Europe.

Of course we must talk about Europe, if we are ever going to reform the institutions that comprise the European Union, we have to talk about it. For far too long Labour, the Conservatives and the Liberal Democrats have been running scared of the issue of Europe and our membership of the European Union. We have let the fanatical right parties, mainly UKIP and the BNP but with encouragement from the William Hague wing of the Conservatives, dominate the centre stage on European issues with their rabid rhetoric and their factual distortions. The time to redress this balance has come. It’s good to talk, it’s particularly good to talk about Europe.

Parliaments: Hung or Balanced

2010-04-22T08:21:00.002+01:00

"Political parties in Britain generally misunderstand each other: Labour MPs tend to believe that Liberals are as keen to hold office and to cling on to their seats as they are. Liberal MPs fail to comprehend the intensity of the socialist faith which still burns within some Labour MPs. To the average Labour cabinet minister, the concerns and beliefs of an Ulster Unionist are as strange and unfathomable as the initiation rites in his Ballymena Orange Lodge. The Conservative Party provides as many mysteries as any Brazilian forest tribe or Tibetan monastery. Nor are the parties particularly keen to understand one another, since like all institutions the subject they find most fascinating is their own internal politics. Other parties chiefly exist as targets off which points may be scored…" This is an extract from the opening paragraph of a book entitled The Pact: The inside story of the Lib-Lab government, 1977-8 by Alistair Michie and Simon Hoggart (1978).

It serves to remind us of the immensity of the task that is likely to be faced by those successful candidates from May 7th. Notwithstanding the alleged desire by many of the electorate for a hung (or if you prefer, ‘balanced’) parliament, attempting to create common ground between Conservatives, Labour and Liberal Democrats is not going to be easy. Throw into this melting pot minority and special interest groups such as the DUP, the SDLP and Scottish and Welsh Nationalists, and even a sprinkling of far right UKIP or BNP representatives, and you begin to realise that achieving political consensus in Britain, if it can be done, will be akin to the miraclulous.

OK, so we have had coalitions in the regional assemblies/parliaments in recent years, and to an extent, these may be regarded as broadly successful, but the fact remains as far as Westminster is concerned, coalitions of either a formal or informal kind is simply not the way they do things. Coalitions require a quite different mindset on the part of our politicians.

The biggest problem after May 7th is likely to be that, just as Tony Blair didn’t "do God", Conservatives don’t do coalitions. As far as I recall, none of the recent coalition administrations in various parts of the UK have included Conservatives. They don’t appear to be regarded as suitable coalition partners by other parties. I am not sure why this is so, but I suspect it is to do with trust. The Conservatives, by their very nature, cannot be trusted to abandon their propensity for confrontation in order to build consensus, and the further the Conservatives move to the right, the more difficult it becomes for others to even contemplate coalition with them.

This is perhaps the real reason why the David Cameron, Ken Clarke and others are so vitriolic in warning against a hung parliament, they know that their own prospects in that eventuality are not good.

The First Leaders Debate

2010-04-21T07:17:00.003+01:00

Many thanks to Rob for sending me this clip. Let's hope for a soft landing.

The Revenge of the Undead

2010-04-20T08:34:00.002+01:00

Yes, they are definitely out to get the Liberal Democrats. Anthony Barnett, writing on the blog Liberal Conspiracy, gives us a taste of the storm to come.

"The two ‘big parties” will now collaborate in a dance of the undead to belittle the Lib Dems, intimidate the public and insist that the only choice is Brown or Cameron. Later in the day Liam Fox was let loose on the BBC’s World at One to give version of what we can expect. He said the Lib Dems wanted to get rid of our deterrent and give asylum to illegal immigrants. I am not a Liberal Democrat. But I thought Martha Karney should not have let these two assertions go unchallenged as both were clearly lies, i.e. Fox knew he was mis-describing the two policies."

And this is the rub, both Labour and Conservatives are clearly willing to lie their way to power and they are going to do it by scaring the electorate into believing that the Liberal Democrats are in some ways unsound in their policies. This is going to be difficult to counter. As I write this listening to the Today programme and Liam Fox and Peter Mandelson are falling over themselves to misrepresent the detail of Lib Dem policies and belittle the radical thinking underlying these policies while at the same time claiming to be unrelentingly positive.

The plain fact is that both Labour and the Conservatives, having spent decades convincing the electorate that Britain has a two-party system of government, are now quite astonished that they have at last been rumbled, and that all they can do is to focus negatively on the Liberal Democrat programme rather than project their own sterile policies.

Anthony Barnett concludes thus:
"This is just an early taster of the fear tactics and distortions that will be used to try and destroy the Lib Dem challenge. It’s important that the Lib Dems keep pressing home the larger picture. The political system is broken and the two main parties are collaborating with each other to protect its central powers of “strong government” by presenting themselves as proponents of ‘change’. This is the politics that the Lib Dems have now challenged. It’s a democratic politics, not an anti-politics, and it has broken through the spin. Stand by for every kind of counter-assault that can be dragged from the gutter in the next two weeks."

No More Wallflowers

2010-04-19T08:13:00.001+01:00

It is what Liberal Democrats have thought all along, the British print media is biased and partisan, and it is so because the newspaper owners seek to gain political influence in order to feather their own nests. Now we have clear confirmation from a former editor of the Sun, David Yelland.

Now what is really interesting following the Leaders’ Debate, the Conservatives and Labour have suddenly woken up to a politics of ideas rather than trite soundbites and tit-for-tat, airbrushed posters, and have been found wanting. So now what do these two dinosaurs of the British political system do? Instead of coming up with new, workable ideas of their own, they decide to rubbish long-held and well-developed ideas of the Liberal Democrats.

Brown talks about ‘exposing’ Liberal Democrat policies, too right let the LibDems have their moment in the sun, while Cameron is going to be ‘relentlessly positive’. That will be day! Cameron must be dreading next Thursday’s leaders’ debate where he will have to explain his U-turn on a referendum on the Lisbon Treaty, why he withdrew his MEPs from the dominant Centre-right European Peoples Party and ordered them into a grouping with fascists and ultra-right nationalists from Eastern European countries, and most importantly why he and his MPs supported the illegal invasion of Iraq?

As for Labour, their so-called ‘ethical’ foreign policy of the last thirteen years has involved kowtowing to the White House and being led into stupid foreign adventures on the coat tails of the American religious right. They proclaim loose support for membership of the European Union while running scared of the nutters like UKIP’s Nigel Farage and the Conservative extremists Daniel Hamman. When will the British establishment learn that if you want to get the best out of your membership of a club, you have to take an active interest in that club’s affairs and put yourself at the centre of the club’s decision-making processes, not sit on the edges like some blushing wallflower at the local dance?

The Bankers' Friend

2010-04-09T09:15:00.000+01:00

Interesting piece in today’s Guardian by David Cameron. In it he announces that if the Conservative Party is able to form the next government, then it would seek to introduce pay limits for the heads of public sector organisations and set up a review body to ensure that the pay of the heads of public sector organisations could receive no more than twenty times that of the lowest paid worker in that organisation. So far, so good, all very noble.

However, if you follow the logic of this argument a little further, the likely effect of this kind of pay restriction is that the really good quality public sector bosses, seeing their pay rates slipping behind those of comparable private sector bosses, will leave their present employment for more lucrative jobs elsewhere, but probably in the dynamic, wealth-generating, private sector.

Soon the government will start to moan about the poor quality of the remaining senior management in the public sector and tell us that the real remedy is to attract proven managers from the dynamic, wealth-generating, private sector into the public sector, all in the name of achieving “efficiency savings”, you understand. To do this however, the pay of public sector bosses will have to be raised to attract the ‘right’ sort of people from the private sector. After all, these people shouldn’t be expected to have to take a pay cut in order to sort out problematic public sector organisations. And so it goes on…

The real issue here is that the Conservatives are being advised by their many friends among the senior levels of business, including the recently discredited and much maligned bankers, who firmly believe that they all run the most effective and efficient organisations in the country and that if only all organisations were was just like theirs, then everything would be hunckadory.

Are our memories really that short? Have we really forgotten whose excesses and greed caused the biggest run on the banking sector since 1929? Have we forgotten that less than two years ago, a huge portion of this allegedly efficient and effective private sector, had to be bailed out by the government, supported by every taxpayer in the land?

These are the same people, whose outrageous pay levels and bonuses have been protected by compliant and deluded shareholders, are now presuming to advise the Conservatives that the real problem doesn’t lie with them but with the allegedly inefficient, wasteful public sector. They have conveniently forgotten that over the last five years or so most public sector organisations have already made huge efficiency savings, and that each round of such savings has become progressively more difficult to achieve. Further savings in this sector can only now be achieved by swingeing cuts in the numbers of people employed in delivering frontline services of those organisations and the consequent withdrawal of those services. This is the real Conservative agenda, and its consequences will be devastating.

Pure Speculation, Of Course

2010-04-02T09:18:00.004+01:00

This is pure speculation, but checking the websites of two doctrinaire Christian organisations, Christian Voice and the Welsh Christian Party we find two remarkably similar Statements of Faith, too similar to be a simple co-incidence, perhaps?

Christian Voice
We believe in one creator God, eternally existent in three persons, Father, Son and Holy Spirit, as stated in the historic creeds of the Christian church.

We acknowledge Jesus Christ as Lord over all creation.

We believe the Holy Bible to be the inspired, infallible, written Word of God to whose precepts, given for the good of nations and individuals, all man's laws must submit.

We believe all government to be under the authority of God and that its purpose is the maintenance of freedom and justice solely in accordance with Biblical principles.

The Welsh Christian Party
We believe in one creator God - Father, Son and Holy Spirit as stated in the apostles teaching.

We acknowledge Jesus Christ as Lord over all creation.

We believe the Holy Bible to be the inspired, infallible, written Word of God to whose precepts, given for the good of nations and individuals, all man’s law must submit.

We believe all government to be under the authority of God and that the purpose of government is the maintenance of freedom and justice solely in accordance with biblical principles.

Jesus Christ will come again to the earth - personally, visibly and bodily - to consummate history and the eternal plan of God.

Could the Christian Party “Proclaiming Christ’s Lordship” simply be a political front for the far more extreme fundamentalist Islamophobe Christian Voice? Both of them are led by a Mr Green originating from ‘sarf’ London.

I wonder if all those electors in Llandrindod South and West realised what precisely they were supporting when they put their crosses against the names of Jeff Green and Martin Wiltshire in the recent by-elections?

Pie In The Sky?

2010-03-30T09:52:00.002+01:00

With the Welsh Christian Party’s Jeff Green determined to fight Brecon and Radnorshire in the forthcoming general election and in the wake of his colleague Martin Wiltshire winning the recent by-election in Llandrindod’s West Ward, it’s time to look at the party’s draft election manifesto.

First impressions are that it is merely an uncosted wish-list with traces of motherhood and apple pie. However, it needs to be unpacked and decoded.
The Welsh Christians seem to have an extremely simplistic approach to economics identifying it only with taxation and the financial sector. Here the 20% rule is applied across the board – 20% income tax, 20% corporation tax, 20% capital gains tax and 20% VAT. How much this will raise is difficult to predict but my guess it is hardly enough to pay for their defence policy.

On law and order, there is a clear bias towards the motorist – raising the motorway speed limit to 90mph and tinkering with fines for speeding and car park overstays. There is also some very woolly thinking on possession of illegal substances, banning the use of bailiffs and stamping out the sex slave trade.

There is a great deal on education ranging from the innocuous to the downright threatening. Examples include the reinstatement of the ‘Classical’ subjects (if this means bringing back Ancient Greek and Latin, I’m all for it); support for the use of reasonable force by teachers to maintain discipline in schools (depends what you mean by reasonable); re-instate mandatory Christian religious education in schools (no to free-thinking, then); ensure that the United Kingdom’s Christian heritage is properly reflected in the National Curriculum (what precisely does this mean?); ensure that proper balanced teaching and debate occurs in schools around the concepts of ‘Evolution’ and ‘Creation/Design in the universe. This last is the thin end of the wedge, on the pretext of balance, the Christian Party is seeking to promote unproven and unproveable notions of about creationism and intelligent design.

Other policies include: the restoration of Sunday as a day of rest for reflection by individuals and communities (is this a convoluted way of saying ‘we must all go to church’?); reject of all attempts to redefine marriage (presumably this means no to same-sex civil partnerships); maintain a well-resourced military with a nuclear deterrent (is this so we can bomb all those nations with whom we disagree or who are in some way different from us?)

Clearly, the emphasis is on the promotion of a very fundamentalist and doctrinaire version of Christianity which has neither respect nor regard for people of other faiths or of no faith. This curious wish-list reveals the naivety of the Christian approach and its origins in the neo-conservative agenda of the Bush presidency of the United Sates. Overall, this manifesto has little practical relevance to the political reality of Britain today. It is ill-conceived, simplistic and shows no evidence of having been thought through.

In short, it is little more than a programme to take us back into the Dark Ages of religious prejudice and superstition, a call for a repressive theocracy in preference to a modern liberal democracy. Voters should reject it and all it represents.

I Have So Many Defects

2010-03-27T08:44:00.001Z

The letters column of the Brecon & Radnor Express this week contains a thorough character assassination of an unnamed blogger who is accused of lacking in humility, lacking in understanding, lacking in courage, “invertibrate”, which I take to imply, spineless and, worst of all, having intellectual thoughts.

Now although the blogger is not named in the letter published in the newspaper, I know that it was me who was being attacked because the correspondents took the trouble to send me a copy of the e-mail containing their letter to the editor by post. So it is clear that the editor removed my name from the letter as it was published.

However, the thrust of their attack is that I prefer to post to this blog rather than write to the editor of Brecon & Radnor Express, and that not to write to the newspaper, as they do frequently, is in some way cowardly.

Mea culpa. I am also facially hirsute and vertically challenged, but then we can’t all be perfect.

Abuse By The Clergy Is Still Abuse

2010-03-19T09:13:00.003Z

There is an interesting and thought-provoking article by Johann Hari in today’s Independent which makes me ask whether it is right to continue with the planned visit to Britain in September by Pope Benedict.

Most of us are conditioned by our upbringing to respect our Christian tradition and to value the part it has played in the formation of our ways of seeing the world. However, there comes a time when most of us realise that rationality is superior to irrationality in guiding the actions of human beings, and, as Hari suggests, a rational response to religious extremism, on the part of whatever religion one identifies with, is to subject that extremism to the rule of law, i.e. the law devised by wise men and progressively refined down the ages based on commonly accepted ideas of justice.

For far too long we have allowed religiously inclined people to convince us that another law, the so-called God’s law, is so superior to man’s law that it is somehow blasphemous to even question it. This way of thinking has allowed evil people to abuse the weak and vulnerable and when they are discovered, allows them to be presented with further opportunities to exploit other vulnerable people.

Those who promote religion argue that it serves to help us distinguish right from wrong, but it seems that notions of right and wrong so preached apply only to the laity and never to the clergy themselves. This hypocrisy has got to be checked, and I’m afraid a pastoral letter from someone who believes himself to be infallible doesn’t quite suffice.

It Couldn't Happen Here, Could It?

2010-03-18T09:00:00.002Z

Sam Wollaston’s review of last night’s BBC 2 programme on Italy’s maverick Prime Minister in today's Guardian is too good not to share.

Picture this. It's election day, May 6 or some date thereabouts. Britain is going to the polls. But when we get there, we look down at the ballot papers and feel bored. Labour, yawn. Conservative, snore. Who wants Gordon Brown or David Cameron to lead the country, when all they care about is politics? So we cross out all the names and write other ones instead – light entertainers, media tycoons, racists, cruise-ship singers, playboys, womanisers, criminals, tax evaders, that kind of thing. People who'll make Britain a bit more fun.

Then, when it comes to the count, it's found – hardly surprisingly, it has to be said – that no one has an outright majority. Hey, no problem, the PM can be a jobshare. And that's how, on May 6 2010 or some date thereabouts, we elect Rupert Murdoch, Peter Stringfellow ("I guess this is now officially a well-hung parliament," he'd quip on taking office), Jane McDonald, Bruce Forsyth, Ron Atkinson, Lord Ashcroft and The Kray Twins to run the country. The Krays are dead? Oh well, the others can cover for them, God rest their souls.

Right, the government needs to put forward some MEP candidates. Rupert selects a few Page Three stunnas; Peter cherry-picks some of favourite pole dancers; Jane, who's travelled a bit, puts herself forward. Ha! Good one, Jane, but seriously, love, take a look at yourself, you're well into your 40s! So Big Brother's Shilpa Shetty is approached instead, although Ron has his reservations . . .

What do you mean this is all a bit far-fetched? It happened – it is still happening – just down the road, in Italy. Pretty much exactly as described above. Except for the jobshare bit, because they've got one dude who covers all bases. Meno Male che Silvio c'e. That's his party's official song, and it translates roughly as Thank God for Silvio.

Whatever Happened To Local Democracy?

2010-03-17T09:16:00.002Z

In a couple of days, Powys County Council will meet to debate a way forward for the Schools Modernization agenda which was recently forced into the spotlight by an ill-judged leak of a working document which revealed the extent to which communities in Powys are likely to be damaged by potential school closures.

The sad reality of this mess, and indeed much of local government in Wales today, is that none of the 22 local authorities have much scope to resist, amend, or in any way change the policy diktats of the Welsh Assembly Government. Over 80% of the money spent by local authorities is derived from WAG and the old cliché – he who pays the piper, calls the tune – remains the dominant theme of almost everything that happens in Welsh local government.

In this reality, county councillors have little freedom to act according to their consciences, WAG says, "Jump!" And councillors ask "How high?" For all the fine words we will hear in the Council Chamber on Friday, the tantrums and the grandstanding, the fact remains, the agenda has been set by WAG and the councillors are required to comply or face even more punitive reductions in the council’s budget.

In modern Wales there is no longer anything "local" about local government, government is effectively located in Cardiff Bay and members of the 22 local authorities in Wales are simply instruments of that Welsh Assembly Government. They may huff and puff but they will never be able to blow the house down.

So if WAG has decided that Powys will have only eight secondary schools, then that is what will happen, if WAG has decided that Powys schoolchildren will be face journeys of an hour or longer to get to school in the mornings and another hour or longer to get home again at night, then that is what will happen. If WAG decides that the 14 – 19 curriculum can only be satisfied by further hour or longer journeys during the school day, then that is what will happen. The sustainability agenda is going to be ignored by forcing children to spend the greater part of their school day travelling rather than learning. Or perhaps the masterplan is that all lessons will take place on buses thus obviating the need for school buildings at all. Don’t laugh, remember may a true word is spoken in jest.

Now Here's A Tory Worth Having

2010-03-12T16:04:00.001Z

I’ve just seen a press report that Edward Macmillan-Scott, former leader of the Conservative MEPs but expelled by Cameron last year has joined the Liberal Democrats. This is very good news because this is a man widely respected by friend and foe alike and one who has loads of relevant experience of European politics.

Let’s hope he is starting the flight of the moderate, sensible One-Nation type Tories who are fed up with the vacuousness of the Cameroons. Who will be next, I wonder?

The Dangerous Law Of Averages

2010-03-04T07:41:00.001Z

Shortly, the annual Council Tax (or more correctly the Community Charge) bill will be dropping through our letterboxes. For residents of Powys this means an increase of 4.25%, and if my memory serves me correctly, this comes on top of a 2.9% increase last year and 3.25% increase the year before.

The Welsh Local Government Association trumpets the fact that the average increase for the whole of Wales is just 3.6% and that is less than the year-on-year rate of inflation of 3.7%. Well that’s all right, then. After all WLGA is keen to remind us that despite these persistent and above inflation increases in the council tax in Powys, the actual average charge to Powys households is still lower than the Welsh average by approximately £37 for Band D properties.

For Powys residents this is not all right. What neither WAG nor WLGA actually say is that over this same period, Powys County Council has received only a 1% increase each year in the income it receives from the Welsh Assembly Government. Effectively, Powys County Council’s income from WAG has been reduced significantly if one takes inflation into account and the burden of funding local government in Powys has been deliberately shifted from the general taxpayer to the local community charge payer. What this means that the overall amount of tax we pay, taking general and local taxation together has increased significantly over the last few years, since we have had no reduction in general taxation and local taxation continues to rise. How else is the Welsh Assembly and its Government to be funded?

However, the real problem for the residents of Powys comes when you set these huge hikes in taxation against the average incomes of Powys taxpayers. Average household incomes of taxpayers in Powys are much lower than the Wales average for a number of reasons:

· The proportionately higher number of self-employed people in Powys who, as always in times of recession, take a much bigger financial hit than employed people.

· The earnings of employed people in Powys are less than the Welsh average because private sector pay rates here are significantly lower than in the rest of Wales.

· There are disproportionately more people of pensionable age living in Powys and these people tend to have to rely on their low, fixed pension income and always struggle to keep pace with inflation.

So before you accept the spin which WAG and the WLGA put on the increases in council tax, remember that one of the canons of taxation is that the amount of taxation demanded from an individual should always be related to that individual’s ability to pay. To try to pass off years of above average increases in council tax in Powys as justifiable because the average band D property charge in Powys remains below the Welsh average is plain hypocrisy when no account is taken of the particular financial circumstances of the residents of Powys.

Questions, Questions

2010-03-03T16:30:00.000Z

The Letters Column of today’s Brecon & Radnor Express has two rather unusual contributions under the common headline “Banging the Lakeside drum”.

The first is from Cllr Sarah Millington which appears to be a long-winded whinge about how she has attempted to use her position as the local member to somehow influence the awarding of a tender to operate the Lakeside Restaurant, but has been rebuffed by the County Council’s Board. In it she seems to be blaming Cllr Ken Harris for persuading the Board to prevent her carrying out her democratic duties to represent the electorate of Llandrindod South in the eventual awarding of the contract.

The second contribution comes from those inveterate correspondents to our local newspapers, Peter and Heather Speake. Writing in support of Cllr Millington’s stance, they imply that members of the Board were uncooperative and hostile to representations from Cllr Millington, they go on to question the authority of the Board to take executive decisions and proceed to lecture the Board on loyalty.

Now in spite of the indignation clearly felt by both Cllr Millington and Mr and Mrs Speake at the Board’s refusal to set aside the statutory regulations for the handling of the local authority tendering process in the case of the Lakeside Restaurant, some questions remain.

Why and on whose behalf does Cllr Millington seek to influence the awarding of the contract for the supply of catering services at the Lakeside Restaurant?

Why do Cllr Millington and Mr and Mrs Speake apparently believe that members of the Board of the County Council, advised by qualified and experienced officers, are not capable of selecting the most appropriate operator for the Lakeside Restaurant?

Why is Cllr Millington so keen to throw mud at Cllr Harris? It couldn’t be anything to do with a forthcoming general election, could it?

Yob In A Suit

2010-03-03T08:10:00.002Z

Evidence from the Guardian website yesterday, if indeed evidence were needed, that Nigel Farage is nothing other than a yob in a suit. He has compounded his outrageous attack on the appearance and character of the President of the European Council by refusing to apologise.

Taken together with his flimsy attempt at self-justification on BBC TV’s Question Time last week, we are left with an unpleasant impression of an arrogant, ill-mannered and self-obsessed man who seems to believe that if he shouts long enough and loud enough the European Union will simply go away.

Sadly, this sort of behaviour is what we are coming to expect from the far-right - the BNP, UKIP and their many fellow travellers in the Conservative party. They all seem to dance to tunes from Lord Ashcroft and News International.

Preserving Sustainable Communities

2010-03-02T12:17:00.001Z

At the special meeting of Powys County Council on 11th February, Cllr David Jones, Portfolio Holder for Schools, proposed that he would bring to today’s meeting of the Council’s Board a proposal for the establishment of a Programme Review Board for Schools Modernisation which would state that Board’s terms of reference and also its composition.

I’ve just popped into the Board Meeting and no such item was on the agenda. Moreover, chats with various Board members suggest that the reason that this paper has been delayed was because Cllr David Jones had gone on holiday. Alternatively, some councillors seemed to suggest that such is the importance of this issue that a great deal more preparation is required before the County Council can move the issue forward. It is rumoured that these proposals will be brought to the Council's Board in a fortnight's time, on March 16th.

Perhaps the councillors are at last beginning to realise the strength of concern among the electorate about the council’s plans to modernise Powys’ schools. They should not be surprised, in past times, education in the three shires of Powys was always a hot topic, and the high standards of education, both primary and secondary, was something of which the residents of Breconshire, Montgomeryshire and Radnorshire were inordinately proud.

This pride persists into the modern day and although we no longer have an education committee within the democratic structures of Powys County Council, another concession to financial pressures put upon Powys by WAG, we still expect our councillors to take an active interest in, and do their utmost to protect, the remaining educational institutions in the county. The electorate will not easily forgive those councillors who have the temerity to try to save money by sacrificing either schools or educational standards.

I acknowledge that it is not easy for councillors to resist the threats and blackmail that emanate from WAG concerning education costs in Powys, and I also acknowledge that the surplus capacity argument is difficult to counter. However, schools are about more than simple issues of cost and capacity, schools are about communities, both learning communities and the wider communities. They are core institutions for the communities which they serve, something which was recognised with WAG’s Community-Focused Schools Initiative. Budgetary pressures cannot be allowed to put that initiative at risk when it is only just beginning to be implemented.

If Powys County Councillors fail to protect the thirteen high schools from this concerted assault by WAG, they will be subject to the charge of being party to the wholesale decimation of the remaining local communities of significant size. Remember, Knighton and Rhayader lost their secondary schools when secondary education went comprehensive and they are both the poorer for it.

If peak oil has already arrived, then the overall cost of transporting pupils ever greater distances and more frequently will soon outweigh the potential savings that might accrue by closing schools now. Far better to concentrate on ensuring that Powys is able to secure communities that are able to sustain themselves into and uncertain future. Powys County Councillors have to make the right decision on schools modernisation, not only for the current generations, but for future generations who are likely to have to cope with a quite different economic and social climate.

Stop Negelecting Rural Wales

2010-03-02T09:02:00.003Z

The Welsh Assembly will receive a report from the Wales Rural Observatory that highlights the plight of the so-called "deep rural areas" following a decade of closures of schools, pubs, post offices and shops. I am sure the report will make quite difficult reading for AMs who represent these communities.

The four "areas of concern" highlighted in the report are: broadband provision, public transport, house prices and access to services. However, although there will be much hand wringing and despair about the consistent failure of WAG to address these issues which have been highlighted before, we would do well to remember that these four areas of concern have become a concern precisely because WAG and the rural local authorities have failed to make a concerted effort to address these issues since devolution.

There has been much talk but little action in persuading the broadband service providers to provide a broadband service in the rural hotspots. Regional and local government have failed to put sufficient pressure on BT to upgrade the telephone network in rural areas despite their huffing and puffing.

Similarly, there has been a great deal of talk about models of public transport in rural areas with great expectations being created about a role for the voluntary sector and their various community transport schemes. However, very little happens no consortia of local providers are ever formed because no financial incentive is offered from either the Welsh Assembly Government or the local authorities. We have waited long and in vain for the much-heralded Local Service Boards to grasp the need to create co-ordinated local transport networks. This issue has been part of the Wales Spatial Plan agenda since the adoption of the spatial plan, but nothing happens.

There is little any government agency can do to directly influence the prices of houses on the open market, but the failure of both regional and local government to ensure an adequate supply of affordable housing in rural areas is nothing short of a disgrace. Until the very recent opportunity for housing associations to acquire partially completed and empty properties from developers hit by the recession, very little was ever done to address the severe lack of affordable housing in the deep rural areas.

It is in the area of access to services that the inadequacies of government intervention is felt most severely. Given the poor rural transport network government really needs to ask how do the residents of deep rural areas get to their doctors, dentists, hospital appointments? How to children from these areas get to school and how long does it take them to get there in the morning and to get home in the evening? How far and for how long do the residents of these areas have to travel to access shops, advice services, job centres, government agencies etc.?

Now in the light of the areas of concern highlighted above, consider the pressure that WAG is currently putting on local authorities to "modernise" their schools provision, bearing in mind that modernise is a euphenism for closing individual schools and forcing children to travel ever greater distances and more frequently to access their education.

Let us be absolutely clear before we get the crocodile tears from our politicians in response to this report from the Wales Rural Observatory, the main reason why these "areas of concern" have become areas of concern is because of the failure of an urban dominated regional government to address the special issues that pertain to rural Wales. This One Wales Government and the Labour Administration before it have steadfastly refused to recognise the special problems resulting from sparsity and rurality, preferring to concentrate their efforts on measures of social deprivation which are heavily biased towards the urban areas and happen to lie in constituencies that tend to elect Labour politicians at elections, or is this simply a coincidence?

Powys Against Cuts in Education

2010-03-01T10:35:00.003Z

This post is devoted to the campaign to Save Powys Schools, currently being organised by the Powys Against Cuts in Education group that successfully resisted cuts some years ago.

Powys Against Cuts in Education
Charter

· All Powys children from 3 – 18 need good local primary schools, high schools and sixth forms
· Sixth forms are vital to schools – sixth formers lead, mentor and help younger pupils which is beneficial both to them and the younger children to whom they are role models
· Children with special needs deserve good special schools as well as well resourced integrated units
· The network of 13 secondary schools with their sixth forms is a precious and vital part of our rural community
· Powys schools provide excellent pastoral care because all children are known and valued
· Powys schools are centres for their communities – providing space, facilities, employment and care and contributing to the local economy
· The temporary dip in pupil numbers provides a wonderful opportunity for smaller classes
· Schools do not just teach skills – they foster creativity, critical thought and the importance of community
· Powys schools already provide a high standard of education
· Improvements should be brought about by consultation with teachers, pupils and communities – not by diktat from Cardiff
· Most of the problems in Powys schools are due to continual underfunding, shoddy buildings and inadequate facilities

We call on our councillors to stand up and fight for our local schools which are one of our most precious assets in Powys. The handling of this issue has caused huge demoralisation to parents, teachers and pupils. They must put this right by guaranteeing to keep all 13 schools and sixth forms open. They should not allow themselves to be blackmailed by WAG. Our schools are more precious to us than any dubious promises of ‘state of the art’ facilities. They should resign en masse rather than allow the wholesale slaughter of our schools!

Defend our Schools!

The website www.savepowysschools.com will be up and running shortly and will carry news of the campaign together details of how you can support offer your support.

This is a vital issue for all residents of Powys, to lose any of the thirteen secondary schools in unthinkable. Our communities are being decimated by the successive closure of post offices, pubs, primary schools and now the very real threat to secondary schools. It is time to draw the line in the sand and say to our County Councillors - NO MORE CUTS.

If we let our secondary schools be decimated, then our communities will die as families with young children will be forced to move away in order to receive those basic services to which they are entitled. Make sure your County Councillor knows what your views are on the continuing threat to our children's secondary education.

Ashamed To Be British

2010-02-25T08:35:00.003Z

The yobbish behaviour of Nigel Farage, one-time leader of the United Kingdom Independence Party at the European Parliament yesterday is the second time in recent years that I feel ashamed to be British. The first was when Tony Blair led the United Kingdom into an illegal war against Iraq in 2003.

Motor-mouth Farage has stepped beyond the pale this time with his boorish and school yard insults on the appearance and character of Herman van Rumpuy, the recently appointed President of the European Council. Whatever one might think about his appointment, and I have issues with the manner in which it was done, Farage has no right to attack this man with personal insults and to do so claiming the support of three quarters of the British people.

Shame on you, Nigel Farage – Shame on all members of UKIP and all those who voted for UKIP in the European Parliamentary Elections last year. You elected a bully boy who simply does not know how to behave decently in a civilised society.

If John Bufton, Wales’ UKIP MEP, has a shred of decency, he would immediately repudiate the childish activities of his leader in the European Parliament.

Little Ado About Something Very Important

2010-02-11T18:46:00.002Z

I went to the special meeting of full council, but I really wished I hadn’t bothered. This meeting had been initiated by the Conservative Group on Powys County Council with the avowed intention of persuading the council to drop the leaked document outlining the options for Secondary School Modernisation.

Well, in the event and after much huffing and puffing, this motion proposed by Cllr Aled Evans and seconded by Cllr Mike Hodges was trounced by an amendment from the Council’s Board proposed by the portfolio Holder for Schools, Cllr David Jones.

The three part amendment confirmed that the original working group which the Council had appointed to come up with proposals for Secondary School Modernisation had been disbanded, Cllr Jones promised to come to Board on 2nd March with a report on the process so far and recommendations for the establishment of a new programme board to take the process forward, this programme board is to include elected members, and finally to confirm the establishment of the programme board, its membership and its terms of reference etc at a council seminar on 19th March.

So much for the Conservative Group playing politics, they were completely outflanked by a well organised Powys Administration. Such was the shambles that when it came to the recorded vote, Cllr Hodges, seconder of the original motion, voted for the amendment and he wasn’t the only Conservative to do so.

Rather than give a full report of a very lacklustre debate, I prefer to give my nominations for the following awards.

Prize for Stating the Blindingly Obvious – Jeremy Patterson on why modernisation was necessary.

Prize for the Most Cringe-making Cliché – Cllr Anne Holloway for “Children are our future”.

Prize for Making First Political Dig – Cllr Stephen Hayes who was so disappointed that the Conservative Group had decided to play politics by calling the meeting.

Prize for Righteous Indignation – Cllr Russell George for reacting to Cllr Hayes.

Prize for Incoherency and Irrelevance – jointly to Cllr Barry Thomas for his story on how he came to grips with his council laptop, and Cllr Sarah Millington for stating that she could not support the closure of any school if it were opposed by the community. (Nice to know your councillor has the courage to make unpopular decisions)

Prize for World-Weariness – Cllr Michael Jones

Prize for Incoherency and/or Irrelevance – jointly Cllr Michael Jones for seeking a long service medal for being a school governor since I don’t know when, and Cllr Ken Harris with “I’ve Been a Teacher” (and, by implication, I’m not sure how many other councillors have my extensive knowledge of education).

Prize for Playing to the Audience - all those councillors who claimed that this meeting was necessary to allay the fears of parents, pupils, school, communities etc. They blatantly failed to allay any fears – the leaked document is still on the table, waiting to be promoted by a different group of “experts”.

Save ALL Our Secondary Schools In Powys

2010-02-11T11:30:00.005Z

Opposition to the proposed Schools Reorganisation in Powys is lumbering into life. A meeting of interested parties who represented six of the thirteen secondary catchment areas was held at Llandrindod yesterday evening and they agreed to reform Powys Against Education Cuts, an umbrella organisation to co-ordinate protest action across Powys.

All those present are determined to maintain the status quo in Powys with thirteen 11-18 secondary schools. They were adamant that to allow the County Council to reduce the overall number of secondary schools and deprive any of the thirteen major Powys communities of their major educational institutions would have a devastating consequence for those communities.

Let us be absolutely clear, many current educational policies are predicated on a dogmatic and ideological adherence to the virtue of choice. None more so than the urban-biased,14-19 curriculum which requires that pupils should be allowed to choose from a huge range of vocational skills options, many of which have absolutely no relevance to the rural economy.

Now I am not against choice per se. In many areas of our complex lives, choice is to be welcomed, however, there is a significant financial cost implied in allowing the very large choice necessary to satisfy the requirements of the 14-19 curriculum. In sparsely populated, rural areas, if this curriculum is to be implemented with its full range of subject choice, this will inevitably manifest itself in very small teaching groups and the need to transport many pupils over long distances frequently. Indeed this is made abundantly clear in the four options of the discredited reorganisation process that was recently leaked to the media and triggered the furore that followed.

The next chapter of this unfortunate saga takes place at County Hall today, when a special meeting of the full county council has been called to debate secondary school modernisation. Let us hope that the totally impractical proposals contained in the leaked document are buried for good.

Nevertheless, it remains incumbent on the County Council, particularly the Members of the council, who to date appear to have been deliberately ignored by their officers, to chart a way forward for secondary education in Powys with the emphasis being placed on maintaining the high educational standards that currently prevail, rather than meekly accepting the diktat of WAG officials who seem to think that simply imposing an urban-centric model on rural communities will necessarily lead to a cheaper and better education for our children.

Members of the Welsh Assembly who this week voted unanimously to trigger the process to hold a referendum on further law-making powers for the Assembly, would do well to remember that if they are to win the eventual referendum on this issue, they will need to be confident that the people of Wales are satisfied with how they have used the powers that they already have. Let them be in no doubt, that with regard to how they have managed, and are continuing to manage, education policy, the jury is still out.

Nuclear Deterrence Or Nuclear Disarmanent? - Your Choice

2010-02-04T07:38:00.003Z

Soon Parliament is due to make a decision about the replacement of Britain’s “independent” nuclear deterrent. Rather than replace it, perhaps we ought to scrap it altogether.

Timothy Garton Ash in this morning’s Guardian eloquently puts the case for Global Zero by 2030. That is, the complete dismantling of all nuclear arsenals by 2030. Nuclear capability may have served countries well during the cold war when there appeared to be some sort of super power balance. However, it is clear that suicidal terrorists supported by rogue states are not going to be deterred by the possibility of nuclear retaliation.

We have seen what can happen when the White House is occupied by a group of fanatical, ignorant and doctrinaire hooligans willing to invade other countries on the flimsiest of excuses, and given the continuing widespread support of the American religious right for candidates of similar ilk, it is possible, even likely that, post Obama, such people could seize power again. This makes the world of our children and grand-children a very dangerous place.

So please consider what Global Zero is trying to bring about and lend this campaign your support. Individually, we can do little to save our world, but collectively anything is possible.

"We Didn't Know" Is Not An Excuse, It Is A Pathetic Explanation

2010-01-30T07:33:00.002Z

Last evening’s public meeting at the Hotel Metropole on the proposed restructuring of Powys’ schools was quite revealing. It transpires that the leaked document was the product of one person, a civil servant from WAG on secondment to Powys County Council.

Apparently four of Powys’ secondary heads had met once with this civil servant to agree the “framework” of this schools review and thereafter the civil servant went away to write up her proposals. Hardly a serious consideration of this important issue. No costings, no analysis, no appreciation at all of the impact these proposals might have on the dispersed and economically struggling communities of Powys. Simply a bit of woolly, blue-skies thinking, a crude attempt at desk-top modelling.

The really annoying thing was the reaction of the county councillors present. Their general message was the leak of the document was a ‘good thing’ because it brought the issue out into the open. Some even went so far as to say that until the document was leaked, they had little or no idea that such a document was being considered. Pathetic.

If this was so, then what the hell were they doing? We, the electorate, have the right to expect our elected representatives to have at least a basic appreciation of what the council officers are up to. Moreover, I would expect some of them, those with some knowledge of educational issues, to be actively involved in drawing up plans for our schools. But all they could say was “We didn’t know, we haven’t had the opportunity to be involved”.

It is absolutely clear that we are not well-served by the present crop of county councillors. If those present at the meeting are typical of all 73 of them, then they are well and truly being given the run around by the council’s officers.

The true indication of the quality of these councillors was exemplified by the contribution from County Councillor Gary Price who began by intimating that the schools issue was too important to used for political point-scoring and then proceeded to try and score petty political points. He alleged that he had tried to persuade his group leader, Cllr David Jones, the portfolio-holder for schools, to withdraw the document earlier this week, and how it was left up to the Conservatives to actually propose such a motion, clearly implying that responsibility for the document lies solely with the so-called Powys Administration, the name of a loose alliance of the Powys Independents and the Welsh Liberal Democrats that is trying to bring some semblance of much needed political leadership to what appears to be an increasingly dysfunctional council.

All that Councillor Price wants to do is to blame every ill and fault of the Council’s on Powys Administration when the reality is that ALL 73 councillors bear a collective responsibility for what is done in the Council’s name, including Councillor Price himself. It is high time that Counciilor Price and some of his colleagues realised that they have wider responsibilities than simply pretending to be the mouthpiece of their constituents, these councillors are expected to exercise leadership and sound judgment on the difficult issues of policy and not simply try to exonerate themselves as individuals when the going gets tough.

It's All About Educational Standards Rather Than Simply Saving Money

2010-01-22T15:46:00.002Z

I had nade a New Year's Resolution to wind up this blog as I prepare to leave the area later in the year.

However, I was infuriated this morning to receive an e-mail from a former colleague on Powys County Council inviting me to join a Facebook group seeking to ”Save Gwernyfed High School”. No doubt this is a worthy cause, however, I can’t help thinking that the County Councillor in question would be better employed by concentrating the focus of his efforts on ensuring the County Council creates a sensible policy for the restructuring of secondary and further education in Powys.

I have seen the latest version of the Council’s proposals and considered the four options that are listed, and I am amazed by the poor quality and lack of vision of what is being suggested. This is a long way away from an exciting vision of the future of secondary and further education in Powys, rather it is a thoroughly downbeat, depressing and defensive document that bears the hallmark of WAG muddled thinking on how to implement the 14-19 curriculum designed for densely popoulated urban areas in an authority which is sparsely populated and rural. The document is nothing more than a clumsy attempt to shoehorn Powys scholls and their pupils into a muddled and inappropriate model secondary education dreamt up by civil servants and failed practitioners in a dark room somewhere in Cardiff.

When are the councillors and, more importantly, the Welsh Assembly Government who sit in their plush offices in Cardiff going to understand the simple message that one size does not fit all? A neat desk-top model sitting on a desk in Cardiff Bay will not necessarily be the most appropriate solution on the ground in Powys. They need to remember that bussing pupils a few miles across Cardiff is a minor logistical problem compared with bussing pupils the considerable distances between population centres in Powys.

One has the right to expect that, after all the money that the County Council and the Welsh Assembly Government have spent employing consultants to advise them on the best solution to the problem of falling secondary school rolls and the increasing costs of providing a quality education for Powys school children, they could at least come up with something better than this version 8 of the secondary schools review.

It grieves me that the council is no further ahead with this restructuring than they were three years ago when I was involved with earlier versions of the document. Indeed, one could plausibly argue that the situation is worse now than it was then. Two or three years ago the process was driven by a clear vision of the need to maintain the excellent standards that exist in Powys schools, this current version of the review document is all too clearly focused on saving money.

So I would say to Powys County Councillors, before you man the barricades to save this or that school in defiance of your own proposals, get your fingers out, sack the consultants and devise a policy that you own and have faith in. That’s what you were elected for – get on with it.

So, It Wasn't Jazz After All

2009-12-22T15:06:00.001Z

You may remember the snippet of Guardian news, courtesy of El Pais, that I blogged about earlier this month. Well, it turns out that the outraged jazz fan who called the police to a jazz festival alleging that the music being played wasn’t jazz has some impressive support from other parts of the jazz world.

Wynton Marsalis contacted the Guardian seeking to be put in touch with the fan to thank him and send him a package comprising the bulk of Marsalis’ back catalogue. Having drawn a blank from the Spanish police and the town hall, the Guardian is appealing to its Spanish readers to find the fan and the Guardian will put him in touch with Marsalis.

Perhaps this could be regarded as some sort of warning to the directors of jazz festivals – play proper jazz or Marsalis will be in touch!

Unholy Alliance - Round Two

2009-12-17T12:48:00.001Z

On June 2nd, I blogged on a possible unholy alliance that might be coming to Llandrindod Wells Town Council between the Welsh Christian Party Leader, Jeff Green, maverick County Councillor Gary Price and Conservative County Councillor Sarah Millington. This was indeed, prescient, for all three got themselves elected at the subsequent by-elections.

Now they are flexing their muscles. At a recent meeting of the Town Council, these three, together with Cllrs Will Francis and Andrew Jones, combined to persuade the council to block a motion to support the proposed transfer of the Rock Park buildings from Powys County Council to a local trust which has leased and maintained the buildings for nearly 20 years.

Apart from this act of petty vindictiveness, the real triumph of this Christian/Maverick/Conservative alliance is to persuade the Town Council to hold its secret precept meeting at the headquarters of the Welsh Christian Party.

The precept meeting is the special meeting of the Council which decides on the council’s budget for the coming year and the amount of the precept that is added to council tax. Because of the sensitivities of deciding where the money is to be spent, this meeting, above all other meetings, should take place at a neutral venue rather than the home of the leader of the Welsh Christian Party. It is regrettable that this meeting continues to be held in secret at a time when local government is supposed to be moving to greater transparency, but to hold it at the home of one of the councillors, with the press and public excluded, is just asking for trouble.

We Need A New Enlightenment

2009-12-10T11:19:00.001Z

Climate-change deniers, Creationists and, Euro-sceptics – do they have anything in common? I ask simply because these groups are concerned with three societal and political issues that interest me most in that they seek to refute, not only conventional wisdom, but also in the case of climate-change deniers and Creationists at least, they are denying overwhelming scientific evidence.

Regular readers of this blog will know that I am not Gordon Brown’s greatest fan, however his attack last week on the "flat-earth" climate-change sceptics who have tried to derail the Copenhagen summit by casting doubt on the evidence for global warming, certainly resonated with me. He was implicitly acknowledging that "flat-earthers" has become a generic term for those who are so totally irrational in their denial of what is self-evidently true, that one begins to doubt their sanity.

Similarly, in the year that we have celebrated the 200th anniversary of the birth of Charles Darwin, there remain considerable, and possibly growing, numbers of people across the world who would deny all the scientific evidence that supports Darwin’s Theory of Evolution relying simply on the alleged ‘revealed truth’ of sacred texts to support their view of how the world came into being.

There is clearly more room for debate over the issue of the European Union and Britain’s continued membership of it. However, what economic and social evidence there is, points to overwhelming benefits being derived by the British people from Britain’s membership of the Union, benefits that are likely to be enhanced after the recent ratification of the Reform Treaty.

Why do I link together the Climate-change deniers, the Creationists and the Euro-sceptics? Because I am beginning to think that there is much that they have in common. Many who would deny the evidence of climate-change also deny the theory of Evolution and all too frequently the same people wish Britain to uncouple itself from the very grouping of nation states that has ensured peace in Europe for over fifty years. These people represent a kind of modern day anti-enlightenment and would have us retreat to a kind of false Utopia, an ordered world where authority derives from an omnipotent deity, the actions of human beings have no consequences for the future of the planet and nations have no need to co-operate with other nations, and, of course, everyone lives happily ever after. Surely civilisation has moved beyond this kind of wishful thinking?

...Yes, But is It Jazz?

2009-12-10T08:10:00.004Z

This morning the Guardian has a report telling of a Spanish jazz fan who called the police to a jazz festival complaining that the music played by a particular band were not playing jazz.

According to the report originating in El Pais: The jazz purist claimed his doctor had warned it was "psychologically inadvisable" for him to listen to anything that could be mistaken for mere contemporary music.

It reminded me about a conversation I had with a long-standing jazz fan from Nottingham in a John Etheridge and the Zappatistas gig at the Castle Hotel, Brecon a few years ago. I was enthusiastically applauding a particular set when the guy turned to me and said: “Yes, it is very good, but it is not jazz”. This led to a long conversation on what was, and what was not, jazz. Eventually we agreed to disagree, but became great friends and sought each other out at Brecon each year until his death a couple of years ago.

It has long struck me that so-called music purists sometimes miss the point. Music is to be liked or disliked, strict categorisation of pieces of music into particlar musical genres serves little useful purpose. This has been brought home to me again after reading a new book celebrating the 50th anniversary of the launch of the Miles Davis classic album Kind of Blue. Richard Williams in The Blue Moment places this legendary album in the context of what was happening in “jazz” at that time and traces the influence of Kind of Blue appears to have had on the music that followed. However, what is clear is that trying to define what is and what is not jazz, is ultimately pointless. If you like it, then sit back and enjoy it.

The Shallowness of Labour?

2009-12-02T08:29:00.000Z

So at long last, a British government is preparing to take electoral reform seriously, or is it? Today’s newspapers are reporting a plan by Labour to offer a referendum on limited electoral reform as part of its election manifesto.

Under normal circumstances, this would be an occasion for great celebration among those who advocate a fair electoral system as opposed to those who are content with the current first-past-the-post system whereby the majority of MPs are elected by a minority of the electorate. What is troubling is the apparent motive behind this move on the part of Labour.

The suggestion is that by offering such a referendum, Labour is seeking to wrong foot the Conservatives by attempting to portray them as defenders of an outdated and discredited first-past-the-post system. Put simply, Labour is attempting to gain party political advantage in the run up to the general election by promoting an issue which transcends party politics.

By all means propose the reform our outmoded and blatantly unfair electoral system, but do it because it is the right thing to do, and not because it might give an electoral advantage.

Demanding Money With Menaces - Life Under Labour

2009-11-30T12:44:00.002Z

Is this another Stealth Tax or what? This morning I received the following from those nice people at the DVLA.

<Dear Mr Peter
Our records show that the photo on your driving licence will shortly reach its expiry date. You must, by law, get a new photo to update your photocard licence every ten years. If you don’t renew your photo, you will be breaking the law and may have to pay a fine of up to £1000…

The explanation? Faces change.

It’s surprising just how much your appearance can change over 10 years. If the photo on your licence is more than 10 years old it could be difficult to recognise you, losing all the benefits of the photocard driving licence.

However, the DVLA is at pains to point out that you don’t have to your photo signed by anyone! So let me see if I’ve got this right. I need a new photo because my appearance has changed significantly over the last ten years but no-one needs to verify that the photo I send in is actually a photo of me. But if my appearance has changed that much, how will they know that the new photo on my photocard driving licence bears any resemblance at all to me?

Moreover, amidst all this Orwellian claptrap, I have to pay a fee of £20 to send them a new photograph of me (or someone who might possibly look a little bit like me). What a nice little earner for the DVLA, proud to be an executive agency of the Department for Transport.

This is nothing other than a tax on ageing, and a stupid tax at that.

Careful How You Interpet This Swiss Referendum

2009-11-30T08:12:00.003Z

It is easy for casual commentators and those with a particular axe to grind to misunderstand the reasons why the Swiss voted in a referendum over the week-end to prohibit the erection on minarets alongside mosques.

Most have interpreted the outcome of the vote as evidence of a widespread feeling among the Swiss against Islam the religion, and Muslims the people subscribing to that religion. If only it were that simple. The real reason behind this surprising vote has to be attributed to a combination of factors peculiar to the Swiss.

Firstly, the natural tendency of the Swiss to distrust the stranger. As a child living in Zurich, although my command of Zuri-Deutsch was very good, eventually a local child with whom I was playing would realise that there was something suspicious with my accent and I would be branded an “Auslander” – a foreigner. There is something very deep in the Swiss psyche that instinctively distrusts people who are not from round here. In this, the Swiss resemble those in Britain we refer to “Little Englanders”, those whose attitudes are characterised by a deep suspicion, even antagonism towards anyone or anything that is different or new to their experience.

Secondly, and this is true amongst most Germanic peoples not only the Swiss, is the concept of “Heimat”, a very difficult word to translate adequately into English. It represents the complex of affiliations that a person has to her/his home, home village, hometown, canton and country. It is more than simple patriotism, it is a crucial part of a person’s identity that grounds that person in their community.

Taking these two concepts together, we must add a third, religion, or more specifically, the reformation. During the reformation, Switzerland hosted and gave refuge to a plethora of varieties of protestantism, Calvin in Geneva, Zwingli in Zurich were just two examples. As a consequence a tension developed between Protestants and Catholics in general, and also between the different Protestant communities. Christian religion has always been important in Swiss life, but with a secular constitution and federal governance, religion stayed firmly a matter for the private individual.

Of late however, with the increasing influence of American-style Christian fundamentalism, and the increasing visibility of Islam, the extreme right and populist Swiss Peoples Party has exploited the latent fears of many Swiss, fears of the foreigner, fears that the connection with the home is being dissipated, and fears that creeping Islamisation is somehow loosening the ties Swiss have to a traditional, community-focused way of life.

To dismiss yesterday’s referendum as a vote against Muslims as Tariq Ramadan has in today’s Guardian is far too simplistic, it is the culmination of a whole load of historical baggage as well as a deep distrust of visible difference.

Voting: For or Against?

2009-11-29T08:53:00.006Z

The Guardian’s website has a report that Nick Griffin, leader of the British National Party and climate change denier is to be part if the European Parliament’s delegation to the forthcoming UN Climate Change Conference in Copenhagen. This will no doubt be greeted with predictable outrage. However, the problem here lies neither with the European Parliament, nor even with Nick Griffin per se, but with those electors of the North West of England who voted for him in the recent European Parliamentary Elections.

Electoral systems in democracies cannot cope adequately with protest votes and care little about protest voters. Any electoral system simply counts the crosses, it is not interested in the motives, the deliberations or lack of them, that were gone through up to the moment of placing the cross on the ballot paper.

Equally, the protest voter rarely considers the possible longer-term consequences that their vote might engender. For most protest voters, it is enough to be “sending a message” to those currently in power, or to those who the tabloids tell us to regard as a bunch of crooks who fiddle their expenses.

We live in a careless democracy, a democracy corrupted by a ruthless press, an outdated electoral system and an unthinking electorate. That is why we have politicians of dubious quality in our regional/national assemblies/government, it is why we have third-rate representatives of the far right in the European Parliament, it is why we have shadowy businessmen and special interest lobbyists calling the shots in some of our mainstream parties. Above all, it is why, for many, the casting of a vote is increasingly a vote against something or somebody, rather than a vote for something or somebody.

We live in a climate of extreme political negativity, a climate created and perpetuated by an irresponsible press, unscrupulous politicians and party hacks (sorry, special advisors). The outstandingly popular TV programme The Thick of It is culpable in this respect, extremely plausible but ultimately vacuous. Modern politics has become a point scoring game, points are scored by delivering the most apposite sound bite or rebuff. Rather than seek to encourage voters to vote for our people and programmes, we seek to rubbish our opponents. It is rare for a modern politician to say, “vote for me and this is what I will do if I am elected”, rather s/he is more inclined to say, “don’t vote for her or him because s/he has some failing or other and therefore, by implication, I am the only rational choice.”

Universal suffrage was too hard won to be treated lightly, and it beholds us all to use our votes deliberately and positively rather than carelessly and negatively, and that is the message we need to get across to the electorate in general, and to new, young voters in particular.

Blair and the Cost of Bush's Friendship

2009-11-27T08:47:00.002Z

Steve Richards in today’s Independent has an interesting take on why Tony Blair took Britain into the Iraq war. Whether or not Richards is right in his analysis remains to be proved. However, Richards does shed light on how political judgements can be influenced by an individual’s perception of past events, the actions of predecessors and the pernicious influence of media moguls.

Perhaps the most telling paragraph in Richards’ article is this one:

"The political calculation was therefore straightforward. As far as Blair was concerned, if he had opposed the war he would have destroyed the New Labour coalition and given up vital ground to the Conservatives. Rupert Murdoch's newspapers were a key factor in this respect. Murdoch was a passionate supporter of Bush's foreign policy. Blair knew Murdoch would have switched his newspapers' support to the Conservatives if he had sided with the loathed Chirac and Shroeder in opposition to the war. In its 2005 election endorsement for Labour The Sun backed Blair for a single reason – his support for Bush in Iraq."

If you believe, as I do, that the Conservative Party is totally in awe of the United States and seeks to establish ever closer links between the UK and the US, and at the same time wishes to decouple Britain from the European Union, the question that remains today is this - is there anyone in the higher echelons of the Labour Party who remains untainted by Blair’s blatant and calculated subservience to the US?

Alan Johnson’s refusal to prevent the extradition of Gary McKinnon to the US, the Asperger’s sufferer whose obsession with UFO’s resulted in him successfully hacking into US military computer systems, seems to suggest that the Labour Party is just as enthralled by the US as the Conservatives.

An Opportunity for Britain to Lead in Europe?

2009-11-25T15:13:00.003Z

The new Franco-German love-in that has been evident since the summer is likely to be difficult to counter in the short term. Its development is a direct result of the failure of successive British governments, both Tory and Labour, to put Britain at the heart of Europe. Realistically we never expected the Tories to realise that the Europe issue was of vital importance to Britain’s future, but Labour have no excuse.

On Europe, both Tony Blair and Gordon Brown have been abject failures. Their half-hearted commitment to the European ideal has been pathetic. Moreover, it has been plainly embarrassing to watch Gordon Brown pushing Blair for the role of President of the European Council. This was cronyism of the worst kind.

In the longer term, the other 25 member states will seek to resist the Franco-German dominance of the business of the European Union and a backlash will develop. This will create a clear opportunity for Britain to play a leading role in shaping the Union post-Lisbon. The tragedy is that whatever party forms the next government in Britain, it is quite unlikely that it will have the vision to recognise this opportunity or have the courage to grasp it. The new British government will be looking in the other direction, westward, forlornly trying to influence the USA through that marriage of convenience called the ‘special relationship’.

It really is ironic that the many Eurosceptics who bang on about the threat to Britain’s sovereignty implied by Britain’s membership of the European Union have failed to realise that Britain’s sovereignty has been America’s ever since the first Gulf War, and we are likely to get ample confirmation of this as the Iraq Inquiry proceeds.

Not The Way To Do It

2009-11-20T08:39:00.005Z

The appointments of Herman van Rompuy as the first President of the European Council and Baroness Ashton as the Council’s High Representative are the outcome of a blatantly flawed process.

It is quite clear from that once the stitch up between the dominant blocs in European politics had been agreed whereby a candidate from the Right would get the President’s job and a candidate from the Left would get the High Representatives job, it remained only to slot appropriately bland personalities into the two posts. This method of selecting the persons to occupy such crucially important roles in the European Union cannot be allowed to be done in such a manner again. Horse-trading behind closed doors is not the way to the greater transparency implied by the Lisbon Treaty.

When these two posts come up again in 2012, a proper and open election by Members of the European Parliament must be organised with the formal nomination of candidates in advance and a properly organised election process using the Single Transferable Voting system. This would give us, the ordinary citizens of the European Union, the opportunity to let our MEPs know which of the candidates we would prefer to speak for us at the high tables of international diplomacy.

While I am not going to pre-judge the competence of either of these people in their new roles, I do find it astonishing that someone elevated to the House of Lords by Tony Blair, and therefore by implication one of “Tony’s Cronies” or one of “Blair’s Babes” (choose the expression with which you are least uncomfortable), should find herself this morning with one of Europe’s most senior political roles never having fought an election.

I wish Mr van Rompuy and Lady Ashton well in their new jobs, I also think that both of them have a great deal to prove in the coming months, not least their personal credibility as leaders on the world stage.

You Scratch My Back and I'll Sratch Yours

2009-11-19T10:05:00.001Z

If anyone was in any doubt about why The Sun has recently trumpeted its support for the Conservative Party, the Conservatives’ Culture spokesman, Jeremy Hunt will be spelling it out today.

Hunt is likely to criticise the current law that seeks to prevent the creation of huge media monopolies whereby a single media group is able to own and control newspapers, radio stations and television channels in a defined geographical area. This law exists to ensure a balanced media and to prevent the total domination of all sources of news and opinion by a single large media conglomerate.

Democracy is best served by the existence of a number of diverse sources of news, feature, opinion etc. Indeed, in an ideal world, no single media group should be able to own more than one national daily newspaper and certainly not, national newspapers as well as radio stations and television channels.

It doesn’t take much to figure out in whose best interests the Conservatives are acting and what News International requires in exchange for the support of The Sun. Or perhaps I am being too cynical?

Wales and the Wider World

2009-11-18T09:29:00.002Z

There is an interesting and provocative article in today’s Guardian. Hywel Williams calls for a revisionist approach to Welsh history that goes beyond the traditional stance that always seems to analyse the history of Wales in terms of the history of England.

"Wales is looked at from within, and always seems a victim of outside forces. Stuff happens all right, but the causes are always found in the country to its east. Survival against the odds is duly noted and admired with a degree of self-satisfaction. The Welsh – we are told – are still around because they believe in community."

My experience of returning to Wales after nearly thirty years of living in various parts of England echoes Williams’ sentiments. Since devolution Wales and the Welsh seem to have become much more introverted and self-absorbed, self-obsessed even. The post 1999 concentration of what is happening at Cardiff Bay has come at the expense of a broader and more balanced international perspective. Couple this with the language apartheid that has been steadily constructed over the past thirty years and the increasingly nationalist, and necessarily isolationist, agenda that is permeating Welsh domestic politics and you quickly get a picture of a nation divided, defensive and confused. Current health and transport policies as they affect residents of Mid Wales as prime examples of this muddled thinking in the Bay.

Williams points to the need for historians to broaden horizons and embrace a more global mindset:

"A wider renaissance in Welsh history is therefore surely possible, but only if more of its practitioners escape the tyranny of political trivia and start interpreting those profound economic and cultural shifts that disregard the national borders. Our recent and contemporary history should not be subjected to an anorak's obsession with byelection results, since politics became a minority hobby in the Wales of this period. The pattern of Welsh daily life was now conforming increasingly to global developments in trade and environmental awareness, in the new cult of the body beautiful, and in the fast decaying cult of Christianity."

I would argue that it is not just historians who need to do this, but all who live in Wales and would see Wales prosper both in Europe and beyond. Like many nations who are struggling to cope with the constantly shifting power relationships in the modern world, Wales has to face the question posed by Hywel Williams:

"How to assimilate without losing too much self-respect in the process?"

Clean Up Politics Now!

2009-11-16T08:14:00.003Z

Nick Clegg is absolutely right to call for the cancellation of the Queen’s Speech and to press for government to concentrate on cleaning up politics prior to the imminent general election.

Writing in the Independent today, Nick Clegg argues that the government should forget about testing the Labour Party’s likely manifesto when there is almost no prospect of any of it becoming law in the remaining 70 sitting days of this administration and do what it can to clean up politics in Britain.

Britain’s political class and system is beginning to take on aspects of process that seems to me to be verging on the corrupt. Apart from MPs expenses, of which more than enough has been written in recent months, the pernicious influence of parts of the tabloid press and those who own it needs to be reigned in. As do the activities of shadowy lobby groups bankrolled by special interest groups acting in support of foreign residents and states.

However, the reform that is most urgent concerns the funding of political parties. Modern democracy should not and cannot continue to depend on the financial power of the Trade Union Movement, large multinational corporations, wealthy individuals domiciled abroad and dubious lobby groups representing vested interests who seek to promote their own agendas.

The time has come for capping donations to political parties by individuals, closing the loopholes in company law that allow non-domiciles to donate to British political parties and to cap campaign expenditure.

The Conservative Party seems likely to win the general election when it comes, and it will win, not because it has a programme for government that is better or more appealing than any of the other parties, but simply because it has vastly superior financial resources to put into its campaign.

The outcome of British elections should not be dependent the size of any party’s campaign chest.

Let Us Build A United Europe With Britain At Its Heart

2009-11-03T15:33:00.001Z

So at long last all 27 member states of the European Union have ratified the Lisbon Treaty. Now we can get on with the important job of building the effectiveness of Europe as an economic and political entity, but first the EU has to build trust among its citizens, it also needs to prove that it can operate with fairness and integrity, and above all, it must take its people along with it on this exciting journey.

Make no mistake about it, British governments are going to have to work exceptionally hard to put Britain at the centre of Europe. Britain needs to think about what is in the common interest of all 27 nations and not simply what is good for Britain. Britain should start to concentrate less on what it can opt out of and concentrate more on what it can opt into. Schengen, for example, and of course, the Eurozone.

Euroscepticism in all its insidious forms has to answered robustly. For far too long, a profoundly Eurosceptic press in Britain has been allowed to get away with attacking and belittling the European ideal. This press is owned and directed by foreign nationals and British tax exiles who have a vested interest in keeping Britain on the periphery of Europe, weak and increasingly isolated. They are consumed by ‘little Englander’ nationalism, all too willing to forget the carnage wrought on European battlefields in the name of crude ideology and the arbitrary territorial and succession claims of ‘precious’ nation states.

Now is the time to put all that behind us and build for the future as part of a proud alliance of European countries capable of cutting the USA’s apron strings and standing up to a resurgent and increasingly nationalist Russia.

The question to be answered is: Have we got the politicians with the vision and the will to make Europe happen? In David Miliband we appear to have one with such qualities, but it is going to take more than a single visionary.

European Realism Or Simply A Flash In The Pan?

2009-10-27T08:47:00.014Z

At last we have a senior Government Minister spelling out in very clear terms why the European Union is of crucial importance to Britain’s place in the world and why, post-Lisbon, the member states of the EU need to work a damn sight harder to unite and get on with the job of promoting European interests. According to the Foreign Secretary, David Miliband: "The trouble is that at the moment the European whole is less than the sum of its parts. Outside Europe people are confused about what we care about and what we are willing to do. Inside Europe it is not much better; different countries have pet projects but there is not sufficient common purpose."

Forget the so-called special relationship with the United States, if it ever existed, it was over in the 1960s. The US’s new special relationship is with China and at last the British government is beginning to understand this. David Miliband has put down a marker for a new attitude towards the European Union and appears to signal that, after years of procrastination from Labour under Tony Blair, the government are ready to take a more grown-up stance on Europe. Miliband now recognises the obvious weaknesses in European foreign policy: "Arrangements are ad hoc, co-ordination patchy, messages confused and relationships with the great global powers lacking clarity, strategy or purpose... So the choice for Europe is simple. Get our act together and make the EU a leader on the world stage, or become spectators in a G2 world shaped by the US and China."

What is even more encouraging is that he seems also to recognise that the UK’s ambivalent or even downright hostile attitude to the European Union of the Thatcher, Major and Blair administrations is no longer tenable: "I think the choice for the UK is also simply stated: we can lead a strong European foreign policy or – lost in hubris, nostalgia or xenophobia – watch our influence in the world wane."

Clearly, Miliband is leading the UK government's campaign to get Tony Blair elected as President of the European Council, although I have yet to be convinced that Blair is sufficiently interested in Europe to do this job effectively, but I am beginning to hope that there is more to it than that. Are we seeing signs that Labour are now willing to face down the eurosceptics in all parties and make Europe a key issue in the forthcoming general election campaign? To do so would put enormous pressure on the Conservatives who are even more deeply divided on the issue of membership of the European Union than they were ten or twenty years ago, but it would also cause problems for the other mainstream parties, including the Liberal Democrats, traditionally thought of as pro Europe but who of late have been increasingly unwilling to put Europe high on their political agenda.

I only hope that Labour have the courage to see this through against the inevitable baying of a profoundly eurosceptic press led by the News International owned papers together with their fellow travellers such as the Telegraph, the Mail and the Express.

So, How Was It For You?

2009-10-26T08:42:00.007Z

Last Thursday’s edition of Question Time, of course. Did anything else of note happen last week?

After much righteous indignation on all sides and many column inches across the print media, what is your verdict on poor Nick Griffin? For me there was a certain inevitability that the programme would indulge in bear-baiting, and it did come across as extremely unbalanced, but ultimately Griffin was exposed as the nasty, dim ultra-nationalist that he undoubtedly is, although the manner of this exposure was less than edifying. I thought that only Bonnie Greer and to a lesser extent, Sayeeda Warsi came through the experience with any credit. Chris Huhne was way below par and Jack Straw came over as bumbling and out of touch. The studio audience were the real stars.

Kathryn Flett in yesterday’s Observer had this telling comment:"Personally, I am delighted that, via the BBC, Griffin finally had the chance to demonstrate to a larger and wider audience than he has ever previously managed to reach not only what an odious slippery little slug of a man he is, but that all his attempts to polish his despicable opinions into something approaching acceptable Middle Englandese were received with the dismissive derision they deserved. Ultimately, and most potently, his big TV talent contest moment in the spotlight has exposed him not merely as the bigoted racist we knew him to be but, arguably more importantly in the long-term, as a political and intellectual lightweight."

I am left pondering two points. What exactly does the term "indigenous English people" actually mean? Presumably it refers to those people found inhabiting Britain before the Romans, the Vikings, the Angles, the Saxons, the Jutes, or even the Normans invaded. Do the members of the Royal Houses of Windsor, Saxe-Coburg-Gotha, Hanover or Orange count as indigenous English people?

Secondly, something good might yet come out of last Thursday's debate, the main political parties may be forced to hammer out sensible immigration policies which can be put to the electorate, rather than simply pretending that immigration is not issue and therefore does not need to debated. Or perhaps the current atmosphere of hate created by the BNP is simply too highly charged for a rational debate on this issue to take place?

The forthcoming General Election Campaign could be a lot more interesting than I, and others, had anticipated.

Question Time Tonight - A Big Risk?

2009-10-22T08:11:00.004+01:00

Apparently Kelvin Mackenzie, one-time editor of that bastion of free speech, The Sun, has suggested that tonight’s Question Time is an absolutely ‘must watch’ event. This is probably the only time I will ever agree with anything that Kelvin Mackenzie has ever said, written or intimated.

Is the BBC right to invite Nick Griffin to appear on the programme? On balance, yes. There are undoubtedly risks for the mainstream parties to appear alongside Griffin on such a flagship current affairs programme, but as Chris Huhne wrote in yesterday’s Guardian:

“… once the BBC had extended the invitation, we [he and Nick Clegg] concluded that it would be perverse to exclude the liberal political tradition that is most diametrically opposed to the authoritarian and nationalist views of the BNP. We had to take Griffin on.”

Given Griffin’s increasingly nasty attacks on his fellow panellists on the BNP website and his attempts to enlist the support of the ghost of Winston Churchill to the BNP cause, the reasonable front that the BNP presented during the recent European Parliamentary Election campaign is being blown apart by Griffin’s own Goebbels-like ranting.

What I hope will come out of tonight’s programme is that Griffin and the BNP are exposed for what they really are, a bunch of nasty, racist, extremists intent on destroying those virtues of Britishness that most of us hold dear: freedom, tolerance, and social justice.